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Hi everyone!
Last time on Singing Sonnet: "I have a whole post about my term coming soon..."
Yeah....so THAT didn't go to plan! Hello lovely people who read my blog, or lovely people who have never read my blog - hi to you too! I'm Memoona, and I'm a failure.
Okay, that was a bit of a dramatic opening. Did you expect anything less? I've been wanting to write about this for ages but didn't manage to pluck up the courage until now. Today, let's talk about failure.
As I'm sure a lot of people are, I am a person who academic failure doesn't really happen to. I can safely sit here, from my privileged position, and say that. I aced every exam I needed to to get to Oxford - I did lots of projects on the side and they were all successful too. My life has been set up in such a way that I have never had to experience failure.
I was forced to believe, growing up, that failure was not an option. It was the most shameful, torrid thing that I could do and it made me a disgrace to everyone. It was drummed in to me - it became my way of thinking, my way of living. So much so that I learned how not to fail. At least, publicly. I looked at the answers when I was doing tests at home. I cheated just so I wouldn't look like a failure, because God knows I could live with the guilt but not with the failing. I feel ashamed saying that - but it's true. And when failing resulted in such inflammatory situations, what else could I do?
For a long time, I considered failure a word that was just not in my vocabulary. Whatever I did, I did it with both feet in, knowing that with the motivation I had, I would succeed. Well, there must have been something up there, even without the cheating (it was when I was 9, okay), that got me here. I must've done something right. I didn't fail. I mastered the art of not failing. Until I got to Oxford.
Most Oxford students will tell you - this place is a bubble. It's really not like any other university at all. It's a very unique place, but of course it's famous for producing extremely successful individuals. I am not one of those individuals. Ever since I got here, I felt like I wasn't meant to be here. My place here was a mistake - a fluke. I was nowhere near competent enough. My mental health was so bad that I barely managed to do normal things like get out of bed, let alone complete mountains of work and be the clever, sociable student that I wanted to be.
When I got back the results of my first public examinations in April, all of my 'cognitive distortions' (as my counsellor likes to call them) seemed to fall into place. They'd been true all along. Everyone around me was wrong - they weren't random voices in my head or irrational beliefs I had because of the trauma I'd faced in my life - they were fact. Real, true, things about me that I'd known all along and was just only now being presented to me on a piece of paper.
I passed 2 of my modules comfortably. My third module - neurophysiology - I failed.
When I first saw it, I crashed. I had a massive panic attack and my body just sort of shut down. Failure? Me? The girl who'd passed every exam she'd ever taken? What would the teachers who believed in me say? What would my friends say? What would my dad say? Here I was, studying at the University of Oxford, my parents gushing about it to everyone they met, and I failed. I was never meant to be here. It was all a lie. I was stupid to think that I'd ever do well here. I'm not special, I'm not extraordinary - I'm a failure, in all senses of the word.
My personal life was in ruins. I wasn't a good daughter, sister, friend - anything. So many failures in my life seemed to lead up to this big moment. I'd failed an audition. I'd failed an essay. I'd failed every social interaction that I had.
And so I started thinking about all of the other ways I was a failure. When that happens, everything just kind of snowballs. Suddenly, I can't do anything - I can't speak, I can't sing, I can't play music, I can't write, I can't act, I can't be a good friend, I can't be a normal person...the list goes on and on. Things that were only insecurities before, now became larger than life, everywhere that I turned.
For a girl who has been taught all of her life that failure is something to be deeply ashamed of, this was the end of the world. I wanted to give up. Nothing that I did would ever be enough to change how much I had failed - academically, and as a human being.
I may as well not try anymore. So many times in my life when I feel my mental health is on an up - something happens which makes it crash right back down again. It's always been like that. Up and down and all over the place. But every setback or heartbreak takes me months - sometimes even years - to recover from, and when you start adding them up, the equation becomes infinitely heavy. This felt like something I'd never be able to come back from.
Failure is such an enormous thing. It breaks you - it takes all of those negative feelings you have about yourself and it multiplies them by a hundred so they're all you can hear. The good things stop getting through. Resentment brews inside as you watch others 'succeed' in all aspects of their life.
I didn't write this post to tell you all that failure is a part of life and that we can move on from it, we can learn from it etc. etc. I didn't come here to tell you that the voices in your head are wrong and that your worth is not based on a single event or exam. Because I know, that in the depths of suffering from what a failure can do to you, those words can't and won't help you.
I'm still recovering. It's going to take me years not to believe all of the negative things I believe about myself. But that one exam I failed? I have another shot at it. I have a chance to make it okay. It wasn't the end of the world. It will be okay, fingers crossed. Sometimes, what we think is a failure, is in actual fact not a failure at all.
I was not well at all when I took that exam. Or in the lead-up to it. I was in an incredibly bad place mentally - so much so that 111 had to be called and things were scary. The fact that I even managed to sit those exams is a miracle. So, I failed. Yes, I know that. I also know, after hours and hours of counselling and lots of thinking, what I have to do to get myself out of this never-ending cycle of self-abuse that I'm in.
I have to forgive myself.
If I am ever to move on, or rationalise anything, I have to forgive myself. I'm only human. I'm a very ill human, actually. We're not made for this world to be perfect in every way. If you're suffering, or have ever suffered, from the disillusion that 'failure' can create - I wish I could give you a massive hug. I know how low your mind can go, and I want to work together. I want us all - all of us who are suffering, to join hands and try and forgive ourselves. It might take longer for some - it might be easier for others. But we are human beings and we deserve the kindness that we give to others. We're not perfect but we're not irrevocably destined to be the opposite extreme. Mistakes, even cartloads of them - don't make us failures.
I am Memoona, and I'm not a failure.
Let's work on believing that.
All my love,
SS xx
P.S. some of the lovely photos in this post were taken by my friend Noama, who is a superstar in every way.