So I broke my writing streak since I began writing for the Odyssey last May.

I’ve written silly articles honoring my friends and french fries, I’ve laid out pieces of my heart where I’ve been scared and anxious. Some articles are just my internal monologue typed directly onto my laptop as I’ve watched my sixth episode of "Private Practice" that day.

I’ve probably said this before, but I always think of the three words that come to mind when people think of me. Is it funny, positive, kind? Is it ditzy, dramatic, or weird? I’ll never really known other perceptions that people have of me until I ask them or they come out and tell me.

Being an ENFJ, it’s always been easier to talk to other people than to talk about myself. I love asking the basics, “Where are you from, what’s your family like?” but not as much as asking the hard questions, “What drives you through life, why do you have such a passion for ________?”

I hope that one of the words that people use to describe me is “passionate”. Passion is defined as, “strong and barely controllable emotion.” In my religion class, my professor talked about how the latin root of the word is actually “passio” which is actually defined as “suffering.” He went on to say that we are actually wrapped up so much in our own passions, whether that be theater or McDonald’s french fries, that we are actually enslaved to our passion through our own design.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that and the things I’m passionate about in my life, right at this very moment. I’m 19 years old, living in an apartment in Chicago, originally OC born and bred from my native Southern California, and I’m majoring in theater, specifically Lighting Design. I’m also a communications studies minor (it’s been declared, y’all), a proud sorority woman, a volunteer at PAWS Chicago as well as DePaul’s soup kitchen. I’m the first born, a best friend, a listener, a girlfriend, a sister. I’m a romantic, a hopeful, a dreamer, a doer.

And almost not so recently, I’m a failure.

I look at my life and how I’ve always run the highlight reel to justify my shortcomings. The awards and the scholarships tucked over the struggles and emotional baggage I’ve been downplaying. If you asked me a year ago how I felt about failure, I would have gotten very defensive about it, only because back then, failure represented less opportunities for the future.

I haven’t submitted an article in about a month.

I didn’t do everything I could to make my show the best it could have been.

I don’t put in more than the necessary effort into my classes at school.

I haven’t made the time to volunteer.

I am consistently slacking in all three of my jobs, and I have been since the school year started.

I am becoming distant from my friends, my sorority sisters, and my family.

These are the areas where I’ve been failing in my life— in just about every area of my life, actually. I’m passionate about writing, I am 100% in love with theater, I’m interested in my classes, I want to drop everything to volunteer, I want to work so I can learn more, and I want to be everybody’s go to gal. So why haven’t I?

I’m not sure. Honestly, I really don’t know. The things that I do know are what I’m not: I’m not burnt out, I’m not as stressed out as I could be, and I’m definitely not feeling like myself. Maybe this is a period of growth in my life, maybe I’m branching out and discovering new parts of myself. Maybe I’m stunted and haven’t figured out a way to get over this slump yet.

I’ve come to accept my shortcomings rather than overlooking them for the last 19 years of my life. I don’t know for you, but this is a giant step for me. I’m the messiest perfectionist there probably ever was, but failure has not been an option or a viable source for anything in my history. Suddenly, after nearly 20 years, it has become one. Failure has shifted into learning, maybe even growth, but more importantly acceptance.

I’m learning to accept the parts of me I’ve failed at. I took this break from writing, and to be quite honest, the parts of my life that weren’t mandatory, in order to figure this out. It’s been a month, and I still haven’t quite landed on what it is I’m supposed to solve. Maybe we’re so involved with our passions that we don’t account for the suffering that comes along with it? The hours we’ve worked, the physical and emotional pain, the selfishness and vanity that comes out of it?

I don’t know what three words describe me to you. All I know is that right now, I define myself as passionate, empathetic, and a failure. And if I had a chance to use a fourth word: I’m proud to be those three things.