What happens when you don’t know how to fail.
I think people forget that there is a way one is emboldened to do more when you do hard things well. And inversely, your confidence takes a hit when you don’t. Writing is hard, and it had never failed me before, until circa 3 months ago.
This is what happens when you are not accustomed to failing and suddenly, everything you seemed to be able to perfectly handle is out of reach. Worse still, no one seems to understand you or see you the way you wish to be seen, and your way out is almost non-existent.
Failure to some is simply a lack of success, but to me, it is far too disorienting and jarring to ‘simply’ be referred to as the lack of one thing. You see, I was labelled a bright kid early enough for my entire identity to be woven around it, I never believed that there was anything I could not do. If I put my mind to it, I got it done, down to the absolute mundane things. This was my formula. If it didn’t work, it was simple; I didn’t give it my best or a system was in the way. If I didn’t give it my best, I would sit with myself and ask why and then, I would thank myself for trying and forgive myself for not winning, and I would go for another thing.
Same cycle, same formula. It always worked. And then, it didn’t. I tried and tried. I abandoned grace towards myself to go ‘one more time,’ again and again. Writing always came to me naturally since I was a kid. I felt misunderstood many times, but never with a pen and paper. I would ramble about my wildest imaginations, my fantasies were always safe when I wrote. Even when I feared putting it out in public, I never stopped. It was mine. I had it. People say they have singing or painting, writing was my outlet. And all of a sudden, it failed me. “It can’t possibly get worse than this”, I said. I’ll find my way back in no time. LOL. Every crumb of grit I have gathered in my lifetime did not prepare me for how worse it got. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t put the words together. It became easier to speak than to write. Self compassion became lost on me. And external grace came in the form of the words; “bounce back”, “move on”– the perfect response from everyone who seeks to tell you the “right thing” to do when you’ve had enough, and then, you’ll say; “O wa o, I’d like to alight here for a moment because this thing is hard, and I seem to have lost touch with my navigation.”
Mental toughness is not easy to come by, and I think it is quite laudable to wield it in the face of intensity. Must be nice to be able to bounce back, just like that. People have done it, yes. But I belong to the minority who don’t know how to ‘simply’ move on or fail forward because at that moment when words failed to form on paper, trust was lost – trust in myself and abilities. Also, nothing is ever that simple. If it was, this wouldn’t be my fourth draft and I wouldn’t be thinking of abandoning it, yet again.
How can I venture into something I’m supposed to be good at, and then I fail at it, and you somehow think it will birth motivation? How? I just want to sit here and wallow in it until what my mind is telling becomes true. Maybe it will be easier because I will have finally believed that it is not mine to have or hold, and so there is no expectation to pursue it if it will not come to me.
But I owe to myself to try. I owe it to myself to not let it compromise my self-esteem. This is just a trial with bugs, and I fit reprogram things till they work again.
I am getting comfortable with the fact that it will take a great deal of time to trust myself again, and honestly, that’s okay. Is there an urge to will things to go back to what they used to be with alacrity? Absolutely. I just want to shape-shift into my former rigid structure, wear it like an armour and act like nothing happened, but I’m healing and healing takes time. I am trusting the process and my creator to do the mending. My identity is being carved out differently this time. It will not be in my work or lack thereof because my work is not me, and failure at it is not a reason to stop completely. I am moving through it, and I hope future me is better for it. I hope she finds closure. So that when she fails again (life is life), she will remember that we have done it before. And although it was hard, we did it, and there is a way one is emboldened to do more when you do hard things well.
And on days, like today when I complete writing my thoughts by pushing extra hard with love and a tear falls from my face, I will embrace it. Because it is my mind thanking me for my patience. My own mental toughness has arrived. Welcome, I’ve been waiting for you.
