Almost a month ago, as I was standing in my kitchen talking to my dad, I got my rejection email from the Flinn Foundation. My immediate reaction was, “okay”, and then I carried on talking with my dad. Thinking back on it, I am still shocked at the nonchalant response I gave to learning I hadn’t advanced to the next stage of the Flinn Scholarship Application. Mostly because 6 months earlier, in July, I had spent an hour crying over a ‘2’ I had received on my AP Language exam.
I have always feared failure. Whether it be because I wish to never disappoint my parents or the people around me, or because I fear the judgment that comes with falling short of success, I have always feared failure. My therapist always reminds me that I am too hard on myself. She will go on and on about how it’s going to be hard sometimes but that doesn’t mean I should be hard on myself. To be completely honest, years of her saying that same affirmation have traveled through my ears and then right back out, until this past year.
Towards the end of 2020, I was cramming to finish my college apps. I felt disappointed in myself for procrastinating until the last minute and kept screaming in my head that I was useless and unable to achieve any amount of success. This only led me to write incredibly depressing answers to my college questions that could’ve only been written by an insecure student who didn’t believe in anything, let alone herself.
Guess where reading over those answers left me?
Right back to criticizing everything I did. Finally, when winter break hit and the deadlines were inching closer and closer, I came to a realization: the feeling of never knowing, the regret of never doing something, is far more agonizing than being told no. I told myself that everyday I spend yelling at myself for not choosing the perfect word to place on the page is a day that I’ve wasted and a day I will regret wasting forever.
That day, I wrote my “Why Not Me?” entry (you can read it in this section of my website ;). I felt a wave of inspiration wash over me that carried me through every deadline. While this epiphany hasn’t eradicated my fear of failure, it has allowed me to be comfortable with it, more than I used to be. I am more afraid of knowing I never tried than trying and never winning.
It’s probably not the most sustainable solution to my problems, replacing one crippling fear with another, but it is a start, and a start is better than never doing anything. Failure is inevitable, it’s out of our control and that is terrifying, but what we do with those feelings of spiraling is what we can control and what breeds new opportunities.