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.