My worst fear is failure.
Not so much the type that keeps me striving to finish assignments to not fail my classes, and not just the type that fuels my overreaching standards of perfection, it’s the type that keeps me up late at night, paralyzed and terrified that I will fail to make my family proud.
I’m fearful of the disappointment that comes with failure. I fear that, as the oldest daughter of the family, if I should fail, I won’t live up to the standard of sophistication and cohesiveness that is expected of me by society and the people that I love. I fear failing to provide for my family the way I want years down the road, even after doing everything to make a life for myself.
I’m fearful of the failure that others will perceive in me. I’m fearful that, regardless of how much I’ve done or where I go, wasted potential is what they’ll see with their eyes.
The thought of failing by having regrets when I’m old and settled down brings an uneasiness to my mind that seems to never go away. I’m terrified of the thought that when I’m off in the world that I could’ve done more, or that I could’ve reached for more.
The fear of failure incapacitates my body like a destabilizer, and it’s actually more common in others than we think. Factors that play into the fear of failure are family, personal standards, external expectations, judgment, society, and institutional standards. It can prevent someone from even attempting anything because the pressure they put on themself to achieve something is too great to even try.
The pedestal I can put doing something on creates a tangle of shame and uncertainty in my stomach that prevents any creativity or confidence from my mind to flow abundantly, and has sometimes led me to quit before even starting.
What troubles me, however, is that inevitably there will come a time (many times in fact) that I will fail. One day, I will fall short no matter how much I try to avoid or prevent it, because at the end of the day, I’m human.
And if I should fail, the scariest part will be having to accept it. The fear of failure becomes less about what you failed to accomplish, but instead about having to live with it. It’s about having to come face-to-face with the truth and accepting that the reality where things don’t go your way is yours now.
Failure isn’t always a bad thing. Just because you’ve failed once doesn’t mean you’re a failure. However, I think that my brain is too wired in the ideals that have shaped me since I was younger–when I finally became the big sister, the role model–that fear will always surround the thought.
