Never Able to Crawl Out

What is it like to be stuck in your greatest character flaw or deficit, not able to get out or change? No matter how hard you try, no matter how good your intentions, you find yourself back in that place again. We all have that struggle or deficit in ourselves that we have to work on for our entire lives. No one gets away from it. Some people are aware of it; some aren't. Mine is fear. Fear can choke me, disable me, help me not to see things clearly. Fear can physically take me out. But I have a lot of strategies to overcome my fear. In fact, if I am fearful of something I will almost certainly go through whatever is scaring me just to overcome that monster.
 I have been trained from childhood how to do this. My mother, bless her amazing heart, knew that I was a fearful child, and she started teaching me how to overcome and triumph over my fear. And most importantly, because I am a Christian, God gets me through that blanket of fear that grips me. I know that ultimately, even if I mess up He will be there to catch me. When I feel fear's steely grip, I turn to Him and He tells me what to do.
But what about those who don't have that? What do those people feel? How they must feel that they are in a web that they can't step out of. I've encountered that lately. And though the struggle this person has spilled over onto me and stung me a bit, I mainly felt bad for this person. I kept thinking, how could this person live with this over and over, trying so hard to do the right thing, but making the same choices and mistake over and over again. And this person has been aware of this and doing this for a long time. Because of this person's desire to control that character flaw and fear of losing control, the person makes the same decisions and mistakes over and over.
I can't imagine living this way. How desolate this person must feel! This person does a really good job of filling up time with activities and people, but it's all surface. Nothing and no one can get too close. I think when that person goes home and shuts the door, darkness must fall. And after observing this person pretty closely for about a year, I'm pretty sure this person can't change.
And actually, can anyone, without God? I know the answer's no to that one. People on their own just aren't good enough.
So then I started thinking, what a great young adult novel this would make-applying these principals in a spiritual way. I'm definitely going to do that. Because I know that every person who doesn't have Jesus in their lives must be miserable and in a dark, dark hole that they can't get out even their trying.