A Personal Account Of Failure - Issue #5
You didn't ask, but I'm back.
Hey people,
I know it’s been about three months now since the last issue and I can come up with thousands of excuses but I will just apologize for being absent, so I am sorry and I hope that absence has made your hearts grow fonder. This brings me to this, I would love to restructure the timing of this newsletter as I have a ton of schoolwork and other duties to fulfill. So, the newsletter will now happen twice a month instead of three and if I’m feeling generous, I’ll drop a bonus letter somewhere in between but chances are I will not be feeling generous. I am also doing this because I do not want the quality of these letters to reduce, I want to write the best things for you.
These three months have been a rollercoaster with more downs than ups. I wrote the most important exam of my life so far, I got a job, I lost an important relationship in my life, I got many rejection emails, Twitter got suspended in this ass country, I got another job, I received more rejection emails, and I failed an exam.
Today, for the first time, I’d like to look back on the past month since I saw my results and talk about how I have [not] processed the whole situation.
I was in my aunt’s room when the result dropped in our class group on WhatsApp. Before that, every message sent to that group was dreaded so I had to mute it but it did nothing to mute the fear that roamed inside me.
I opened the result, my heart beating in my mouth so fiercely that even my tongue pulsed, and traced the list down to my matriculation number and then to the side where I saw a resit in anatomy. Sadness replaced the fear that roamed inside me. Then anxiety began to take root.
I walked out into the parlour, interrupted my mother and aunt’s discussion, and told them. They told me congratulations for passing the other two courses and continued that discussion. Nobody shouted at me for failing, nobody asked me if I didn’t read hard enough, nobody told me to immediately start reading for the resit. They just said congratulations and moved on like my life had not been pushed to the edge of uncertainty.
I wanted them to say something more, anything. Maybe acknowledge that the failure must hurt or that I could have done things differently or even shout at me. But nobody in my family has ever doubted my academics so to them, this was a small hurdle I would clear easily.
For me, it was different. My mind does not know how to process unpleasant situations and failing this exam was more than unpleasant so I immediately activated my trusted self-deprecating humour. I scrolled through my album of memes and flooded my WhatsApp status updates with pictures and captions that made people laugh because I hated the sympathy that would have come if I didn’t. My misery doesn’t like company, it loves a comedy special.
“I’m sorry you failed”. That’s what a lot of the messages sounded like. Why are you sorry I failed? You are mostly sorry about the wrong things you have done, why is my failure one of those things? That was the routine of the days after the result came out. And then immediately after apologizing for my failure, they say “I know you’ll pass the resit”. How do you know? What crystal ball have you looked into and seen that? I understand sha. It’s very awkward in these situations where after apologizing, you do not know what to say next. But the result of this is I never really talked about how I felt with anyone. I just followed the routine, diffusing the awkwardness with a joke and letting them run off having fulfilled the duty of checking on me, feeling better about themselves.
Failure, unlike success, is intricately tied to your person. This is the cruel irony of it. Many times, we can share successes with other people, other factors. We thank our parents, our friends, our lovers when we win. We find gratitude for their roles in our successes. But not with failure.
Failure is yours and yours to keep. No matter how many times you repeat to yourself “I am not my failure” you cannot disentangle from it, trust me I tried. Like a sentient web, it ropes you in the more you struggle.
I looked at that result every day for more than two weeks, tracing my matric number to the result that sat beside it. All of them mine, impossible to untie from me no matter how I tried, and then I cried.
I spent the month mostly sitting at home and wallowing in different kinds of emotions, all of them bad. Many times, I feel grateful for a second chance just because a lot of people have it worse than me, but then I get deathly scared because what if this second chance is a kind of twisted torture? A small hope dancing in front of me only to be smothered by another failure. I don’t know. It’s hard.
I’m back in school again to resume my fourth year while I read for my resit but I cannot fully immerse myself in this new class. Like my friend said, “we’re in year 3.5” and that can get better or worse.
I want to end this one on a positive note, but I do not want to pretend and I hope you stop contorting your sadness into an imitation of joy. You deserve to feel in zeniths and nadirs.
What this newsletter is listening to.
Doja. That's what I've been listening to. Her recently released Planet Her is a journey with many detours, all of them with beautiful scenery. She expertly moves through genres singing and rapping in an array of flows. My favourites from the album right now are: Need To Know, I Don’t Do Drugs, Ain’t Shit, Options and Get Into It (Yuh) but I’m sure by the time I send this letter the rotation will change.
I also curated a playlist of songs that I think manipulate voice in unique ways. I hope you listen to it and enjoy it.
What this newsletter is watching.
I am currently rewatching Superstore and it remains one of the funniest TV shows I have seen. The outrageous scenes interwoven with smart social commentary keep the characters fresh and immerses you in the Cloud 9 store they work in.
What this newsletter is thinking about.
I assume the bulk of this letter gives you a glimpse of what I’ve been thinking about.