dreams and failure, and narratives thereof

[atheilen]

"The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."--LMB

We as a culture seem to be obsessed with dreams, with pursuing them, with putting everything on the line for them. Never give up, we hear, until we hit a certain age and our parents start telling us to scale back, be reasonable, get a good job and settle down. And yet, our heroes are the ones who don't, who push on, who achieve the impossible.

I am tired. I want to go home.

But it's okay to fail, we are reminded, as long as we try our hardest, as long as we give everything we have to the dream, push ourselves beyond the limit of endurance. If we do that, we will not have failed, even if we don't achieve our goal.

But if we don't want to pay the cost...well.

I have realized I don't want to pay the cost. I love being a scholar, very much. I love what I am studying even more. But it's not worth the loss of my dignity, the breakdown of my body, the neglect I have been forced to endure. It's not worth no showers for four months, not worth sitting in my own waste, sometimes for hours on end.

I am tired.

I want this. But the biggest dream for me has always been the most unattainable: a little, quiet house somewhere, with a boy with kind eyes and a few rescue cats. An herb garden, maybe. Books, certainly. I am turning into a person I don't recognize, who will not be able to enjoy that life even if she does get it.

It's just, I'm not used to giving up. To failing at something I wanted. If I failed, I thought it would be before this, in the planning stages. I came close, several times. I have failed before, that's for sure. Been disappointed in myself. But not like this, not deciding that this thing I wanted is not worth the price,

But I am tired. I want to go home.

I am also angry. My whole life I was taught that anger is bad, and now I see it can be productive, if you use it and don't let it use you. I never wanted to be an advocate. Now I am beginning to see I have no choice. I wanted for it not to be necessary, I guess.

This is rambling. I guess my question is, when is it giving up, and when is it starting over? Can it be both at the same time? I nee some guidance here, to learn how to fail. I am a helicopter child, carefully shielded from failure and brought up to believe in the crystalline snowflakery of her won brilliance. Is there a book somewhere? A map? A manual for how to do this gracefully, without being eaten live with resentment like my mother? Inquiring minds want to know.

Comments

[laguera25.livejournal.com]

It is okay to be angry. Anger is your right. It is a divine gift, a driving force. It is sometimes the only friend the shadow people have. Denying your anger is just as exhausting and frustrating and ultimately useless as being swallowed by it.

You are giving up, but it is allowed. No one should have to destroy themselves to get the bare minimum, the smallest poorest scrap of their dreams, but that is what the world so often asks of people who need help moving through it. Abase yourself. Crawl. Suffer. And when you have suffered enough, then perhaps we will give you what you seek. No one should have to play such a masochistic game just for the chance to pursue their simple dream. You are allowed to opt out, to refuse to hurl yourself off the cliff.

Go home. Rest. Recover. Rinse the taste of dirt and filth from your mouth. Breathe. Let your mind settle and your bruises heal. Maybe when you're not exhausted and absorbed in the fight not to wallow in your own waste, you will discover an alternate road to your dream. If not, maybe you will discover a new dream, one that doesn't demand more than you can give.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Yes. This.

And it's not as if I'm leaving tomorrow. I plan to finish out the year, barring any catastrophe. But the thought of putting a time limit on it, of being done in April, of going home to Ottawa, the home I made for myself with exhausting work...I entertained it and drew such a huge mental sigh of relief that I knew it was the right choice.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

The neglect shouldn't be any part of the cost, and it makes me angry that it has been.

As to your question, I think one always has to give up in order to start over. Either you let go of where you are first and then find a new place, or else you find a new place and have to come to terms with not being able to stay where you were while being somewhere new.

Time does alter perspectives, but right now I'm just angry at what you've been through, and sad you're having to work this stuff out at all.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying this, Kat. I find being disabled, most people don't acknowledge that having to choose between your dreams and not-being-neglected is not a reasonable decision by any standard, and not a choice one should ever have to make.

(I am also furious at some of the crap you are going through now, btw. We can be furious for each other!)

[melinda-goodin.livejournal.com]

Also keep in mind that you might just be putting the dream on hold for a while. My university is working to make entire courses available online - and there are schemes like Open University Australia available in the UK and other countries. I hope that someday you will be able to resume your dream from a place that is set up for your needs, not having to risk your health in someone else's poorly set up and supported space.

You need to look after yourself and listen to your instincts :}

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Very true.

(Also, hi stranger! How have you been?)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Your anger is your right. Anger is a useful thing, like fear, when harnessed. Anger is the opposite of complacency. Your anger is justified. And it makes me frankly furious that neglect is part of the cost for you where you are now.

I'm not a good person to give advice about starting over. Failing to achieve something I wanted dearly is not the equivalent to failing as a person: it took me far too long to learn that (even after the universe did its kindly best to give me plenty of painful opportunities for practice). And in the end, although this isn't, perhaps, what I saw myself doing three years ago, it is still a thing that gives me joy. If I learned tomorrow that I could no longer do it for financial or other reasons, I would grieve and rage. But you have to be able to let go, or the could-have-beens poison all your present joy.

The only real way to live with grief - and relinquishing something long desired is a kind of grief - is to put away regrets. (After a respectable mourning period: I rather like the idea of formal mourning.) What is done is past: only the present and the future matters. Every new day is a form of starting over.

And giving up and starting over are just two different ways of looking at the same thing. Every time you start over, you've given something up. Every time you give something up, you have the opportunity to start over.

Lately, thinking about coming to terms with events - vicissitudes - I've been meditating on the Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate, the niju kun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niju_kun). Which include such precepts as Mentality over technique and Make adjustments according to your opponent. They mightn't be useful for anyone else, but they've been helping me when rage and failure felt like acid under my breast, so I offer them.

And letting go of something for the time being doesn't necessarily mean letting go of it for all time. There is also that.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Liz. You have been a very good friend through all of this, you know? I genuinely don't know what I would do without you in my life.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

What are friends for? It's a privilege to know you, you know.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Failure is one way we learn. When I was about 25 and in the midst of my life falling apart on me, I stumbled across a useful proverb: "Fall seven times. Get up eight."

There are many things that are not worth the personal cost. Life, relationships--adulthood, I have found, is largely the result of balancing costs and benefits. "Can I live with X if it gets me Y?" "If Z means I have to endure Q, do I still want it?"

Congratulations on making a considered and mature choice.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Bear. :)

[consonantia.livejournal.com]

Love & good thoughts to you. ♥

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

You too, always.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

This doesn't sound like giving up. This sounds like making a choice.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

It's not a choice I wanted to have to make. Actually, I hate having to make choices at all. :)