Failure and Shame
This is my second post, its filled with family drama and might trigger people who have a difficult relationship with their parents, Im hoping it stops being our burden one day.
Ive been thinking about how to start this for hours, well since I decided to move over to this platform, one of my many many transitions. I didnt know that there was a platform one could have paying subscribers, until this came across my tl and here we are. I was reluctant and unsure for a couple of reasons, one of them is fear of failure.
Ive been online for about 14yrs and Ive had a wordpress blog, a domain I own, a website under construction, a shopify, a consultancy, a podcast (I think Ive named most if not all the platforms Ive been on so far) all of them active or live in one way or another and underutilized and this is the reason I say I was afraid of failure with this, its because it comes from knowing that Ive had a lot of platforms to express myself on and somehow they are not active. One could diagnose me with something or the other when its a matter of resources that has caused this constant stops and starts. Let me explain, all these platforms require one kind of financing or resource support in some way & yes these were started with support one way or the other but eventually, systematic set ups ended up winning so we try again.
Im a Black Disabled Darkskinned masc representing woman, my existence on its own is considered offensive in so many ways, just existing feels like a protest and knowing that despite all the things that make me feel unwelcome in this world, I decide to be here regardless, that shows that failure is my biggest fear but in all honesty, I have nothing to fear, everything in this world says i don’t have a right to be here.
I grew up an only girl, the eldest and until recently, I wasnt aware that I had a hateful mother and its thanks to covid, it took a lot but it gave so much more, its only during wars and pandemics that you see what your life is worth to those who say you are family, so besides the conversations we would have and they always ended with me feeling like I was the worst person my mother had ever endured, I thought it was my FAILURE to be the kind of girl child she had wanted or wished for and I spent a lot of my lifetime trying to buy her favours so I could at least have a semblance of a functional relationship with my primary parent but ive since learnt that its never about the money and no matter how much goes into a relationship, if its a one way street, its never going to work & children who have dysfunctional relationships are often the ones expected to extend the olive branch, it took a pandemic for me to chop off the poisonous branch.
This is my 2nd submission so you are still going to read a lot about my non existent relationship, im hoping that by talking about it, i will get more comfortable with talking about being estranged from my family without people feeling the need to pity me or to try and talk me into “getting” past it, there is a lot of shame in admitting that the people who brought you into this world dont have enough affection or regard for you to want to know what is happening with you and that it was not to your doing, so Im learning to strip myself of another layer of shame that I have nothing to do with, Im wearing it by default of being but its not mine and giving it back starts with a conversation like this one.
Failure and Shame going hand in hand is not by accident, that is why we hang our heads in shame when we feel that we have done something shameful by failing, regardless of what we did on our end of the world to make sure that things go as far and as well as they could, we leave the rest to fate, the universe and other people’s free will yet when we “fail” its our alone, its a strange relationship we have been taught to have, shame for not succeeding at something that has so many other components and deciding factors and its because of things like this that I have started re examining how I feel about failure and to remind myself that by virtue of being who I am, existing how I do, show signs of everything but failure and shame.
I am not sure where this well end up, i might get tired of writing on here or the rules change or I actually finish this book Im afraid of but for now, here I am and this will have to do and its okay to start over, it might make sense one day, or not, either way, its still valid.