Failure is not an option

I didn't know what to tell him, standing there in the kitchen as he explained to me his doom. For the record, he's not doomed. He is my boyfriend and he is one of the smartest people I know. He's incredibly bright and a hard worker. He spends his days and nights working on math problems, talking to math professors, doing whatever he can to ace his classes and understand these difficult concepts I can't even begin to wrap my head around. I know I'm biased, but if you ask me he's one of the best math students in Ball State's program.

If you ask him, he's doomed.

I did what I've done in the past. Coach Laura suddenly appeared to give him a pep talk. To convince him that he is not doomed, but if he doesn't find some confidence then his attitude is going to affect his GRE performance. He has what it takes, he just has to believe it. If he walks in there with the same hopeless expression that I saw standing there in the kitchen, he's never going to succeed the way I know he can.

It reminded me of a saying my coach used to tell me when he knew I was having issues with my confidence with running in high school: "The body is willing but the mind is weak." I hated it at the time, but since high school has passed I've seen the truth in that statement. How we let pressure and our lack of confidence get in the way of our performance. How we have the ability to do well, but our inability to believe in ourselves is often times our great downfall. It doesn't matter if we can or can not, if we don't believe we can do it, then we probably won't.

I looked him dead in the eyes and tried to transfer my belief in him to his belief in himself. Looking exasperated he said to me, "It's not going to be good."

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Volleyball practice was the last thing I needed. Another sport that I ultimately suck at. I love volleyball, I always have. But I love volleyball in the way where you just grab some friends and head to a sand court and just start playing for the heck of it. You might keep score, you might not. But you play for the fun of it and that's all.

The volleyball team I signed up for is not in it for the fun. Well, I'm sure they're having fun, but they'd have even more fun if they won. They wear spandex shorts and knee pads, two things I certainly don't own. Short little running shorts? Absolutely. But tiny little spandex shorts? I don't think so. They practice spikes and servings. They have a game plan on the court. They know where the setter needs to be. They play with a smile on their faces while I try to hide on the corner of the court, hoping the ball doesn't come towards me. This fun little game I used to love so much has suddenly turned into a personal nightmare. It's the same with ultimate frisbee. I'd probably love it if the guys I play with weren't all about winning. But they're men. And as a friend used to say, "I don't play for fun. I play to win and winning is fun."

But I play for fun. I can be a very competitive person but I've learned that usually just provides unnecessary stress and pressure and if I don't win I usually get pretty upset. I don't like that. So I try to play for fun. But when everyone is playing to win, it's hard to keep the "just have fun" concept in the front of your mind. Sure enough that slowly drifted away and all I could think about was how I suck at serving, blocking, spiking...basically anything that has to do with playing volleyball.

I left volleyball practice before it was actually over, plopped myself in my car, turned on the radio and started crying. Seriously? Over volleyball?

Yes. And not just for volleyball. I started crying for all of my other failures as well. My failure to find a job and support myself on my own. I had to call my dad that same day and tell him I needed more money. Crying because I bought chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts and my chicken parmesan was not up to par; my failure at cooking. My room's a mess. I don't think my roomies like me much because I'm never here and therefore I barely clean the house. Crying because I don't know if I'll find a job after college. Crying because my abs aren't flat and I ate a huge gob of cookie dough. Crying because I'm scared. Crying for a thousand reasons that I think I just needed to cry about. I'm a girl. Sometimes we just need to cry.

The voice of reason started getting to me and telling me to stop feeling sorry for myself. But I chose to ignore it. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was failing and that I'll continue to fail. The pep talk I gave my boyfriend I needed to give to myself.

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Tomorrow is a big day. My boyfriend will be taking the GRE in hopes of getting into grad school and continue moving forward with his plan of becoming a math professor. I will be in Bloomington with the blessed opportunity of interviewing people in person. It's my chance to try to get the best stories possible for the article I'm working on for Running Times, the one thing I feel like I'm not failing at (well, not yet). While he works out some differential geometry problem I'll be pushing the record button and asking these older runners to describe to me their story with club running and why this all came to be.

I have this gut feeling tomorrow will be great. I have this feeling my boyfriend will do much better than he anticipates. I have a feeling I'll be on some journalism high all eager to start transcribing interviews and figuring out what to do next. I have a feeling that we both have the ability to succeed.

But if we don't? What if we let our lack of confidence get in the way of what we're capable of doing? What if my boyfriend sees a problem he can normally solve and draws a blank? What if I ask the wrong questions or talk to the wrong people and royally screw up my big chance at getting published? What if our biggest fear becomes our reality: what if we fail?

If we fail then we fail. We'll know what we did wrong and we'll learn from it. He'll retake the GRE and maybe grad school will have to be put on hold for a bit. I'll eventually stop crying about not being published and find a new story to start working on. It'll suck. We're so eager to move on with our lives, to continue moving forward with our goals. But we both know it won't be smooth-sailing. We both know we might have to face some setbacks. There's not much we can do about it. Failure is just a part of life.

Failure is not an option. But if it happens, it happens. It won't be the end of the world. We'll pick ourselves up and move on. And fortunately the one thing that I am most confident about, the one thing I'm not afraid will fail, is our relationship and support for each other. If we fail, then at least we're going down together.