Usually I can feel my heartbeat in my chest, but this time it was different. This time it pulsated throughout every bone, muscle and nerve in my body. Badum badum badum. My fingers acted like plugs on electrical sockets, pumping the electricity from my beating heart into the grips of the wall. Blindness is quite a funny feeling, my senses became amplified as they tried to compensate for my lack of vision. I slowly moved my right leg up and then lifted my left arm into the void. Badum badum badum. I manage to crimp the fingers of my left hand onto a small handhold, but they slip off like cars on an icy road. I panic, this was the third time I attempted this route and I wanted to do it perfectly. My right hand is desperately trying to crimp to another small finger hold but I fall off the wall. My heart skips a beat and then explodes with fear as i feel myself falling, I had failed again: Badum — badum badum badum. My chalky, sweaty hands and balding rubber shoes try desperately to correct my mistake before I fall: slap slap thud slap thud. Suddenly, I feel a hard jerk and crack on my waist and I’m somehow still suspended in the grips of darkness, but ready to face the problem again.
I can feel my heart beating through the pencil I’m writing with, the marks on the paper get darker the more I concentrate. Frustrated with my error-ridden attempts, I flip the pencil and furiously erase the “progress” I made: skr skr skr skr. My hands become sweaty and the pencil slips from index and ring finger onto the floor. “Great, this happened last week too,” I thought as I grabbed my pencil and put it to paper once more to redo my work. I stare into the mistake covered paper and the sunbathed white walls, hoping they would provide me with some sort of inspiration. The eraser streaked paper and my mind might are as blank as the walls, there is no work to show besides scribbles and fragments of black rubber strewn about the paper and my derailed train of thought. The voice echoes across the room and sharply grounds me back to my surroundings again: “5 minutes left,” and I find myself facing the problem again. I am certain I had made many mistakes, but I could only try again.
My fingers quickly pitter patter across the keyboard as I write this piece, like rain on a metal roof “dap dap dap dap.” Once again I face the blindness and my mistakes, this time it is manifested in Google Docs with red lines. As I write, the hidden parallels between my frustrations and failures in rock climbing and math reveal themselves like the route of a problem on the wall. However, these feelings have taught me to be grateful for those who remind me to continue fighting. When I fall on the rock climbing wall, my partner is there to catch my fall and put me face to face with my problem until I can summitt it. When I find myself staring blankly at a problem I have attempted many times, someone or something is there to tell me to try again. Mistakes are a hallmark of true success, perfection is an unattainable standard.
Many times this fall, I realized that I bought into the false narrative that perfection is desirable. If I had achieved perfection on the first try, I would have missed an innumerable amount of priceless lessons, such as understanding the true value of those who are there to support me. As the leaves and my opinions changed this fall, I am truly grateful for all the mistakes I made and those who were there to catch me when I fell.
