A Treatise on Failure

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They say that you haven't failed, you've simply found one way that doesn't work. Or that Eddison said that "I haven't failed, I've just found 10000 ways that don't work." Or that neither success nor failure is final or fatal. Or, to bring it home, that failure is just part of your 'come up'. But I think we, if not I, gloss over the fact that failing at something feels shitty. Perhaps it's my depression talking, but failing at something is soul-crushing. Yet, when we look at the highlight reel of our lives, we view failure in light of what comes next (which is, hopefully, success). From a biological perspective, this makes sense. We tend to forget things that hurt after a while (for example, I have forgotten what it felt like to be burned by the oven whilst making chicken nuggets).

But what happens when you are met with failure, after failure? What do you do when your failure begets more failure? To contextualise, a little bit about me. I do not believe in myself. In fact, I don't know how. When asked what some of my qualities are, I am unable to answer because all I see is, for want of a better phrase, 'toxic sludge'. But because I know that I am literally unable to believe myself, I rely on others for my perception of self. They set the standards I live up to and most of the time, I am able to do so (to their knowledge), all the while berating myself for not being more. So when I fail, I shut down. Because I have proven myself right; that I am what I believe myself to be, not the good others see me as. It strangles me so much I can't breathe and I feel like I am about to choke. And what's worse is that I have a double conscious. I am able to see that this is an overreaction but unable to reconcile this with what I feel. I am unable to pull myself out of the pit. So, when I fail, it starts an unprecedented chain of hopelessness and I wear it like a double-egged dagger - showing it to others as a warning to avoid me while, simultaneously, piercing myself with it.

So given that failure is a given in life, how? Just how?

Just asking for a friend.

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