I Feel A Little Bit Like I Failed

It was around 11:30pm and it was insomnia … brought on by too much going on in my head and preventing my tired brain from enjoying precious sleep. It wasn’t even that I was worrying about anything specific. I was just awake – Uneasy, emotionally uncomfortable and awake. I decided catching up on One Tree Hill was the best way to deal with it. And one little line made sense of everything.

“I feel a little bit like I failed.” Brooke Davis’ character said to her therapist.

And the minute I heard that line, the light bulb went on in my mind. The clarity of it all came on in a wave, and a weight felt lifted as I figured out what it was that was bothering me.

I’ve mentioned before that I am way too hard on myself. That my standards of myself, for myself, expected of myself are always set higher than the average level of acceptance for any task. On MySpace surveys I’ve always listed that my worst fear is Failure.

Failure is terrifying to me. I work too hard to fail. I’ve always been that girl who gets everything that she wants because she works sooo hard to get it. And if I don’t get it, then it’s because I’ve decided along the way that I just didn’t want it anymore. Competitive in personality I’m the girl that takes on the challenge of being told “You can’t do that” because it’s such wonderful satisfaction in being able to show them wrong.

Except that I feel a little bit like I failed, and it’s been eating me up from the inside.

I feel a little bit like I failed myself when I quit my job. I worked so hard to get my degree, to get my job. My dream job has always been to be an editor at a magazine. Now, I realize that my life now doesn’t mean that I still can’t be that. But the job I had was my dream job in itself. In fact, once I started it, it became the dream job come true. And after all that hard work, and all the effort and love that I put into my education to get my job and my job once I had it, I walked out on it. I feel a bit empty inside. I feel a bit like I’m missing a part of me. I feel a little like there is a hole in my heart when I wake up in the mornings to start off the work day. And in a way, I feel a little bit like I failed myself.

I know the task now it to let it go. I actually got to live my dream job … my dream career … And, it is still attainable. So it hasn’t passed me by. The opportunity isn't gone.

And now, I just have to accept and know in my heart that this is all true.

And now, I just need to make new goals and new expectations. I guess it goes along with the change and the Mantra (see last entry for the Mantra).

And now, I need to understand that even though I feel a little bit like I failed – I really didn’t.