I have failed.

I have failed. Those words came tumbling out of my mouth like a waterfall, just as tears gushed from my eyeballs. Failure is something I have been afraid of since I was just a little girl. It seemed that I was destined to fail, and the thought crushed my soul. I hate messing up. I want to be perfect. My parents have always held very high expectations for their children and I am no exception. But perhaps the expectations I have held for myself are the most crushing of all. It seems I can never do anything right. I have been trying to please everyone in my life. And in the process I have succeeded at making no one happy.  My most recent failure, you may ask, is my relationship of 7.5 years. To say that this isn’t my most painful failure would be a big fat lie. I literally tried everything to keep my relationship afloat and when it ended, I felt like a complete failure. It’s hard to feel as though your world is caving in. It’s hard to feel the weight of the world crushing you from within. There’s really no easy way out. But I guess that even failure can be good. I’m trying to learn how to fail. You see, I’ve learned a lot in the process. I’ve learned that just because it didn’t work out doesn’t mean that it’s my fault. I tried. I tried to make it work. I tried when it seemed hopeless. I’ve realized that maybe I needed to fail. I needed to know what it feels like to try for all it’s worth and yet still fail. Sometimes things just don’t work out, but the lessons we gain in the process are invaluable. I learned to value myself—something that I had never done before. I learned to be happy when nothing goes the way you plan. I learned that failure is not necessarily the worst if you use it to motivate change. Sometimes failure is necessary.