Failure – it’s a word I’ve been using against myself for a while now. But the last few months, since my aunt died, I’ve been quietly battering myself with the word.
Charlean was more than just my aunt. She treated me like I was one of her grand kids, and spent most of my childhood taking care of me. There’d be times once I was older that we’d have a difference of opinion, but she still loved me all the same. I spent the last few years regularly going over and bringing her books to read from my collection. But the books she wanted to read the most, she never had the chance to.
Mine.
And just a week or so before she died, I was promising I’d have a decent draft to bring by for her to read. I printed my manuscript. I was almost to the day job finish line. I could do it. I could finally let her read something I had written.
Then, I failed.
I was there when she died. I was there when the nurse came to clean the body. I was there when they came to take her away. It started at 3am and felt like it went on for an eternity. It was hard. Ridiculously hard.
Before my mother and I headed home, my uncle told me to go into my aunt’s bedroom and get the books she had borrowed off of her shelf. That’s when it hit me.
When I held those books in my hand and saw the bookmark where she left off, and the books she had yet to finish, it felt like an elephant stepped on my chest. I couldn’t cry again. I couldn’t breathe. Her life had stopped so abruptly, and then the thought finally hit me. I had failed her.
I have tried to reason with myself that I didn’t really fail her. But she always asked to read something of mine, and I always let everything else be more important than getting my writing career off the ground. She believed in me more than I ever have.
The thought still lingers there. It held me up on progress during my time I spent unemployed. I was ashamed of myself, and the words just wouldn’t come when I needed to write. All I could focus on was that word. Failure. I was out of time, so why should I progress?
It’s becoming easier now to confront this feeling. I’ve started writing again. Started edits again on the manuscript I had wanted her to read. I’m working on my projects and trying to balance things out and get my life back together. It still eats at me, but it also drives me.
I count her among those I must live for now.
~Angel
Misadventures of a Misfit 