Failing to Fail
Listen, life can suck. I speak from experience when I tell you that life can snatch the rug right from under your feet — THEN it’ll kick you in the ribs with steal toe boots on once you slam to the ground. I’ve been there. This thing called life has trampled me on a few occasions. I had been caught up in the running of the bulls, scrambling to stay out of the way, so I know of what I speak. I’ve been hit so hard, with so many things at once, I was left wondering how I was even standing.
Without a doubt, I suffered a lot of damage while I was married. Domestic violence is one of the greatest atrocities of humankind. It can have everlasting effects and that’s part of the abuser’s mission when he or she is abusing you. He or she wants you to be afraid. He or she wants you to doubt yourself. He or she wants you to believe that you’re worthless. He or she wants that control. He or she wants you to fail.
A broken, battered person is an abuser’s most prized possession. Well, that and the power he or she holds over the victim. He or she loves to break their prey down mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially. In my case, those breakdowns were inclusive of mental, emotional, and financial slaughtering, but the physical assault occurred when the mental and emotional destruction became too much for my body to handle, and I had an aneurysm.
On July 21, 2009, my body had finally had enough of the mental and emotional torture I was being subjected to, and life as I knew it came to a screeching halt at 10:36 that morning. I knew what was happening to me so I knew my life would end in a matter of minutes if I didn’t get help. I drove myself to the emergency room and all the while, I prayed that I would survive. At the time, I wasn’t pleading for anything other than to live. I knew that my mission was not complete here on Earth, and I knew I had not fulfilled my purpose and calling. I had stumbled. I had fallen. Things were bad, they were really bad. I needed more time. I needed to push through.
I had let myself down in so many ways. I had become another person’s doormat. I had become the victim of domestic abuse. No one, dead or alive, could have convinced me that one day, I would be the victim of domestic abuse. I was too tough for that. I was too strong for that. On that day, though, I felt like a failure. I had gotten a big, fat F the day my body finally crumbled into an unrecognizable heap of shame, fear, and exhaustion. I was flat on my back (literally and figuratively), but I wasn’t about to accept that failure lying down. I had to climb back up that mountain of survival in every sense. What I didn’t know though, was that I hadn’t actually failed.
The definition of failure is (1) lack of success; (2) the omission of expected or required action; (3) the action or state of not functioning. Here’s how I knew I had not failed even though my confused mind had tried to convinced me that I had: (1) I had succeeded in surviving. Sure enough, I was lying in ICU with a ruptured vein in my brain, but I had survived; (2) I didn’t wait for help the day I had that aneurysm. I drove myself to the emergency room because I didn’t want to die; and finally, (3) I WAS ALIVE! I wasn’t functioning full-throttle, but I was still functioning. I refused to stop functioning. Nope. It wasn’t happening.
The only way you can consider yourself a failure is if you allow yourself to become one. You’re under no obligation to allow any other person on this planet to define you as such. My abuser tried with all his might to make me feel like I was worthless and useless. In all honesty, he came very close because there were times when I felt like the biggest loser in the world. The thing is, though, I finally took a good, long look in the mirror, and while I saw a shell of the woman I’d been before he had ravaged my very being, I also saw that the fire inside me was still burning. That fire had burned down to the embers, but it was still burning. It was up to me to rekindle it. I needed to dash it with gasoline, but I was going to rekindle it. That gasoline came in the form of determination, desire, and a plain old refusal to allow a sad, abusive hollow-hearted man to define me. I refused to be who he said I was. I refused to fail.
