Failing and Finding My Words

What I learned from falling backwards and failing forward

I used to be a skater. Or I skated. Every week, dutifully, I would go to my group  lessons, memorizing the smells of the rubbery, blue floor, of residual sweat from  the varsity hockey practice that had come before, and walk importantly around the  rink, notwithstanding the fact that the ice always humbled me. I was decent at best,  so long as I was going fixedly in the forward direction. Ask me to change course,  however, and I would suddenly need to dart off to the sides, communing with the  wall which never asked anything of me. I told my parents that I wanted to go all  the way with this skating thing, that this was my passion, which they met with their  usual unconditional support. They bought the skirts, the tights, the shoulder bag, so  for all intents and purposes, I was a serious athlete, but for the small hindrance that  I was allergic to falling and getting back up. The day came for me to do backward  crossovers to advance in my training. Unfortunately, there was no way of doing  backward crossovers forward. After a very short career, I retired my dream and can  now be found haunting ice rinks semi-unprofessionally and going exclusively  forward.  

I also used to be a tennis player. Or I played tennis. Every week, dutifully, I would  go to my group lessons, memorizing the smells of the artificial turf, turning over  the fresh, felt, neon-lime green Wilson balls in my hand, and would walk  importantly around the YMCA, notwithstanding the fact that the court always  humbled me. My forehand could give the illusion of being passable, but my  backhand gave me away every time - that I had no natural prowess of which to  speak. Nevertheless, I told my parents that tennis was going to be my thing this  time, that I would play on the school team, and was again met with their patent  parental support. I got the lessons, the rackets, but in a similar fate to skating, the tennis career that wasn’t blazed quickly and unspectacularly, and the forehand only  periodically comes out when there is need to kill a particularly bloodthirsty  mosquito.  

If you’ve read this far, you’ll have observed an easily discernible common theme: that I am not a sports gal, unquestionably, but that I’ve always struggled - with  struggle. At the first sign of resistance, I have conventionally blanched,  withdrawing myself from a path that might force me to grow in ways I wasn’t  prepared to; that might ask me to come nose to nose with my own fallibility. When  you’re young, failing feels like the most final and tragic fate that could befall you.  With life, though, I’ve learned that it was never easier to have been a student than  when I had everything to learn and nothing to prove.  

I loved that time, whether I understood fully what it was affording me or not. I  used big words incorrectly, only to be corrected. I used baking soda when the  recipe called for baking powder, resulting in less banana bread and more banana  brick (a bit of a textural anomaly but no less edible.) I failed tests, lost jobs (in fact,  I have lost a spectacular number of jobs in my life, which is not by any means a  point of pride, but indeed a very well-researched case study of my own resiliency)  and was ultimately enlightened by the fact that the days still, without fail and  through no fault of my own, kept coming - with greater levity, greater compassion  for the life journey that I’ve tried every day to refine and cultivate yet more fully,  and with so much tenderness for the little girl that feared the failing.  

I was only a half-model student in that I was a glutton for English class almost  exclusively - particularly when reading plays, and particularly when I had a good,  meaty monologue to be read in front of any number of unrequited, swoopy-haired crushes named interchangeably John and/or Brian. I would never be accused of  being too hardworking at those things that didn’t naturally compute, though. Math  was a pox on my days, giving me every reason to think that my brain simply  wasn’t apt for numbers, or that I was just not smart. No matter how hard I turned  over trigonometry in my brain, it would never, could never, add up. Trig was the  first thing at which I unmistakably failed. As a result, I spent one ill-fated summer  being tutored by a classmate, a girl who was, in my estimation, in every way better  than me - better at math and her naturally wavy hair never frizzed in the summer  humidity, which remained the bigger blow to my ego. Worksheet after worksheet,  practice test after practice test, I plodded on through the steaming July and August  months to my bleak fate of retaking the Regents exam in a gym teeming with other  poor, mathematically inept souls. It was the lost summer, that summer spent  beating my head against the wall of my most clearly delineated limits.  

Words, though...  

Words were steadfast. I found them everywhere - when I sang, when I spelled,  when I wrote, spoke, read. At every juncture, there was a hyperbole that could  color my adolescent thoughts with just the right shade of melodrama; almost any  question I could ask of anyone and get a nearly honest sense of who and what they  were at this moment, in this life, in this world. They were my due north, and they  never betrayed me because they never failed me.  

When I was relentlessly, and admittedly quite cleverly bullied by my comrades,  without intermission, in kindergarten through 12th grade, I could rely on a journal  to get me back into a world I could work with; one that acknowledged the  challenge of being on the fringe but looked with boundless optimism towards that promised day when I might be seen, recognized, and met with understanding.  Thirteen years of creating a near impenetrable force field from the ribbing of my adolescently brutish peers of the time - perhaps my greatest, most inexplicable success to date - and it was almost impossible to objectively measure. There were  no grades to mark it, no benchmarks of accomplishment or external validation that  I had learned to seek so hungrily. There were only words and the unwavering,  almost delusional solace I had come to find in them.  

We learn a lot of things when we’re young, but perhaps nothing more important  than the merit in the gifts that nobody sees, but from which everybody, in their  solitude, benefits. They are those things that we hang our hat on, so often taking  for granted the incredible worth and singularity held in each youthful doodle and  limerick, and the surest sign that the childlike, playful, defiant, beautiful spirit  remains unextinguished. The irony that I dance with every day, though, is that,  despite having no natural ability for, say, tennis, skating, trigonometry, or in all  honesty, most gainful employment, I would still sooner submit myself to being  judged and subsequently failing, or maybe worse yet, succeeding, at those things  than the ones that I love most; than send my words out, naked and wholly of  myself, to meet their judgment.  

There’s a cardinal rule that they don’t teach you right at that watershed moment  before your frontal cortex fully forms, I think; something that I learned over and over and over, then forgot, then just feared: failure is only failure when ventured out loud – when there is something to be gained and lost, in front of a jury of your  

peers, your best friends and worst enemies, your parents, mentors, siblings, and the  stranger crossing the street. It is a glorious, beautiful, intentional thing, and, in fact,  something to tirelessly pursue, arguably more so than the success itself. So, again, if you’ve made it this far, these words that I lovingly release into the world, to find  a heart that beats similarly, to give air to a timeless plight that you and I surely  share, is an exercise in failing out loud at those things that we love. I sit here, a  trepid 30-year old woman behind a keyboard, asserting that I will not let one more  day go by with words unsounded. Because more than failure, I fear my own comfortable silence.