Read This If You Feel Like A Failure

It's not a bad thing.

Is that crazy? Maybe. I don't think when you clicked on this article you were expecting for that to be the first thing you read.

I won't sugarcoat it: feeling like a failure is a gut-wrenching and terrible feeling. It clogs up your brain to the point where it's the only thing you can think about and it tears you apart the longer you dwell on it.

I think about failure every day. I think about it a lot because I'm about to be a senior in college and I still have no idea what I'm doing with my future when it seems like all my friends know exactly what path they are meant to go down. I feel like a failure because I was told constantly before I went to college that I would never get a job with my major and I'm terrified to think that I'll be proving all those people right. I feel like a failure because my daily life seems as though I'm wading through quicksand, desperately trying to catch up to everyone else, but it seems like the faster I try to move the slower it takes to make it to the other side.

But then I have to remind myself: I cannot look at other people's lives as a template for how I should live mine.

Life is hard, but it's supposed to be! It's supposed to feel like a confusing mess at times, but that doesn't mean we're the only ones feeling that way.

Everyone feels the same way you do, even the most successful ones because failure is a natural part of life, but it's how you react to it that matters. If you fail and let that feeling tackle you to the ground, then you're giving up and allowing it to hurt you. It's how you learn from the failure and past experiences that matter, and it's always better to fail forwards than to fail backward.

I hope that makes sense, but it might not right now. And that's okay! You're allowed to read this and think "This girl has no idea what she's talking about!" and then slam your face into your mattress to cry your eyes out. Believe me when I say that it's normal and perfectly reasonable to have a bad day (or if you're like me, multiple bad days) and to feel like a failure. You are only human and it's in our genetic makeup to feel a wide range of emotions, especially the negative kind.

But you must remember that optimism and hope matter. Everyone says to "look on the bright side" and it may seem like that side just straight up does not exist, but the other day when I was having a bad day I thought to myself "Hey, I touched Bruce Springsteen's butt once!" (long story, but I went to his concert and he crowds surfed and then BAM the best moment of my life happened) and how many people can say the same? How many people out there can say they touched Bruce Springsteen's butt? For me, that's the bright side of things. The bright side of things could be different for you like "At least you have an adorable puppy that loves you" or "At least you have running water and a bed to sleep in" but there's always at least one positive thing that you have.

Maybe you didn't get that awesome job or internship, but at least you got to go to that concert or that vacation that would've stopped you from making those memories. The bright side exists, you just have to look for it.

Your experiences may be different from everyone else, but if every book had the same plotline, same characters, same chapters, or same structure nobody would read anymore. It's the different things that happen to us that makes our stories so unique and makes us want to continue reading.

So maybe I'm not in the same position as all my friends are. And what about it? We have a different story being written and it's crazy for me to think our experiences should be identical.

So the way I see it, you have two choices: take my words with a grain of salt and continue to wallow, or get back up on your feet and learn from what happened so that the rest of your story can be written (after all, nobody likes reading a story where there's no action).

Embrace what happened to you, whatever it was, because it's too exhausting trying to be perfect and it's easier to accept that you're not.

You got this. You're unbreakable. Your story isn't over yet and a win is heading your way. I just know it.