Get Up Already—You’ve Been Down Long Enough

Growing up I never understood what the word failure meant.  I was a top-notch student and never studied a day in my life.  School came “naturally” to me.  I was an amazing athlete; never once was cut from any team I ever tried out for.  I excelled in everything I ever set my mind to.  At first glance while you may be thinking, So what?  I’ve heard enough, there’s a bit more to it than that.  Being successful all the time is not all it’s cracked out to be.  The one lesson I never learned as a child was how to fail.

I was a mere 19 years old when I hit bottom and hit it hard.  I thought that my “natural” ability to succeed would just keep me riding high throughout life.  What an idiot I was.  I was filled with conceit, filled with a lack of real desire, and filled with an extreme unawareness of how unkind the real world truly is.  Failing out of college threw me for a loop.  I realized that if I wanted to get the grades I did in high school (yes, I was an Honors student), I had to actually study.  In order to play college basketball, I had to work my tail off.  But in the moment of failure, I didn’t want to see any of that.  So I crawled into a shell of denial and walked away.  For ten years.

I stopped seeing myself as a scholar, as an athlete, as anyone important and took the next available route to moving on with my life.  Within three years I got married and found myself working in professional fields—insurance, banking, lending.  And for the next ten years that’s what I did.  Because I could pick up on anything quite quickly, my dreams were pushed further and further into the past and I found myself developing into a career that, while I was good at it, I absolutely hated.  I couldn’t stand pushing the numbers, schmoozing the clients, and having to put on this pretense of loving my “career” the entire time.  It wasn’t me.

Unfortunately, I also failed at keeping my marriage together and soon found myself as a divorced, single mom of two—who had limited skills and zero education.  Not even 30 years old yet, I knew I needed to make a lifestyle change.  I needed to find that confident kid that was lost so many years prior. 

See I had allowed failure to take a vice-like grip on me and I could no longer see myself as anything but.  Everywhere I looked in my life, all I saw was failure.  Believe me, there was more to me than that impending, damning word—but I was blind to it. 

I will never forget the day that I enrolled into the local community college.  The fear that I felt—what if I failed again?  Would I allow another ten years to pass before I’d be able to try at anything again?  The questions were flowing freely through my mind, my heart was racing and I couldn’t stop thinking, Screw it.  I’ve been down long enough.

I won’t lie—I felt a bit like a loser enrolling in a community college.  At one point in my life I had been that top-notch student, who would have never even considered attending a community college.  To appease these feelings I set some goals for myself—goals I knew I could accomplish.  I’d have to graduate at the top of my class, with those Honors, to feel success.  And that’s what I did.  When I finished community college (in one year, not two), I immediately enrolled into the state college.  I didn’t walk at graduation that year—not because I couldn’t, but because it didn’t feel right, yet.

Going to college and being a single mom presents a plethora of other issues.  It wasn’t easy.  There were days when the guilt of having to study versus playing Polly Pockets or kicking around the soccer ball lay on me like a ton of bricks.  Sleep was never an option—as the only way to curb the guilt I felt was to write my papers when my babies were asleep.  I looked like hell most of the time, but I never gave up.  Granted I wanted to many, many, many times—I just made the decision to see this through.

I often reflect on those ten years I wasted being held down by failure, and I realize how important getting up and putting fear on the back burner can change your entire life.  Regardless of your passion embrace it and be willing to work hard.  If you can do those things even on the worst of days, failure no longer becomes an option.

Twelve years after I walked into my first class at the community college, I crossed the stage and received my doctorate degree in education.  And no matter how many classes it took me to get here or how many papers I’ve written, nothing was more valuable than remembering to get up already.  Go live your passion—you deserve it, just like me. 

You can find Meredith’s blog From the Sidelines at http://merelovesthepack.blogspot.com