Crisis Week Day 2: Failure

I failed my driving test. Initially I didn’t want to talk about it, had a blogpost ready in mind that consisted of only two sentences: I failed my driving test. I really don’t want to talk about it. And truth be told, if it wasn’t crisis week, I wouldn’t even want to mention it, but what has happened has happened, I’m not going to question it.

“What has happened has happened.” How I hate that sentence. People say it often to cheer someone up, let bygones be bygones, nasi sudah jadi bubur, there’s nothing else you can do. Fine I agree. But it’s not like the knowledge of truly knowing things have passed which I can’t change can prevent me from thinking about it. Because that’s what I’ve been doing since the tester gave me a big fat cross on my result sheet. It consumed me whole the first ten minutes during which I wanted to drown myself in the toilet or something but now I’m okay. Okay in comparison to being wholly consumed. Okay as in being half-consumed. Which sucks but at least I don’t feel like drowning myself anymore so woohoo gold medal for me.

My luck has really gone to the dogs today. Because that’s really what it’s all about. Luck. Not lack of skill or practice. I’d practiced for an hour beforehand and everything was okay, my driving instructor said I was okay, and even I said I was okay. And then I got up that hill and panicked when the handbrake got stuck and I panicked some more and the car died and I rolled down the slope. All this after I’d landed perfectly within the yellow line AND raised my hand.

So now I have to wait two weeks before I retake my test. Two weeks. I have a car and I failed my first test and have to wait two weeks for my second one. Everyone thought I was going to pass. Heck, I thought I was going to pass and that was the highest expectation of all. But no. What the hell did I do. Or rather what the hell didn’t I do. Now I have to miss another day of school. Now I still can’t use my car legally on the road. Now I’m still a failure.

Let me confide this in you: all along, everything I did, I expected victory. Or in blander words, things to work out right. Every single time. And every single time, ever since I dubbed in perfectionism, I did. I passed. I won. I was victorious. Up until this year. Twenty twelve was and who knows, still is a year of failures. I failed my violin exam for the first time, I failed to get the ASEAN scholarship, I failed my driving test. It was a hard punch in the face after so many years of perfect triumphs. This is either my luck and/or skills going downhill or just me stepping into the real world. I really hope it’s the latter, otherwise I might be consumed once again.

The worst thing is I know I can do it. I can pass this. This isn’t hard at all. I’ve done this multiple times. I’ve prepared myself for this moment. Things weren’t that bad when I failed my violin exam, because I knew I didn’t practice enough, and I was expecting a fail. But not this. Everything was absolutely perfect, building up to this moment, and then I literally roll downhill and ruin everything.

I’m not accustomed to failure, I will admit this. I’ve led an invincible life all these years, pretty much born with a silver spoon in my mouth. People fail and get up and try again and learn in the process but I haven’t failed enough times to do the same. Looking at everyone else around me doing what I failed to do that ONE TIME is really a hard hit. I can do this. I could’ve done this. But there are no second chances in things like this. At least, not for another two weeks. Now everyone is going to feign surprise when I tell them I failed my driving test. If you see this, please don’t do that. In fact, please don’t bring it up at all. Mentioning it on the Internet is one thing but mentioning it face to face is another entirely.

But contrary to what I’d initially wanted to do, which is not talk about this at all, I’m going to do so because not talking about my failures is going to hurt me so much more than the opposite. So there, I’m baring my weaknesses to the “real world”.

And now I’m going to keep this feeling of failure from consuming me by crying alone, something which I very much wanted to do on the spot but couldn’t.