Learning to Let Go of Failure

"You did well but you didn't pass today," the lady in yellow shirt told me as I pulled into the parking lot of the Division of Motor Vehicles.

"Excuse me?!" I asked with all the indignation I could muster. (Oh well, I guess I didn't say it out loud. It was just the voice inside me questioning the lady's awful statement.) As she proceeded to tell me that I turned too wide and started drawing diagrams of the road and the car, the terrible feeling of failure began to gnaw at my being. And all of a sudden I am in that place again where my best is apparently not good enough.

I called my hubby on his cellphone to tell him I am in the car. The moment I hung up, my tears started flowing as the wall of denial crumbled. I was already in a desolate condition when Steve finally arrived and all I could say between the sobs was "I FAILED!" He looked confused for a while and then he wrapped his arms around me to comfort me knowing how poorly I deal with anxiety.

Oddly enough, failure is not foreign to me. I have encountered it quite a few times to know that it is a normal occurrence in life. But I guess I just could not handle it as well as I should, specially if it's the "almost there" type, the kind where I'm just half a point away from passing. And to top it all, it doesn't make me feel better when people try to console me with "you were almost there" because that's just it - "I am almost good enough but not quite". It tends to build up the frustrations, disappointments and what-ifs instead of diffusing it.

Fortunately, I have a family (both biological and marital) who understands that I just need reassurance. My husband, in particular, knows how to handle my emotional breakdown or meltdown as he likes to call it. He always tell me to focus on the positive side of what happened and the on the lessons I could acquire from the experience. He reminds me that self-flagellation would not do me any good and I just have to learn to let go. He assuages my feeling of inadequacy by putting things in a different perspective.

I am feeling a little bit better now after all the crying and the realization that life does not end in my failing to get the driver's license. In fact, this incident made me examine how I view things and how I handle them. It made me aware of what things I need to adjust and made me appreciate more the beauty of familial support.