a-trainwreck-of-thought

[a-trainwreck-of-thought]

disappointment

The thought of being a disappointment is such a debilitating feeling for so many people, one of those people including me. The fear of not being enough and letting down those who believe in you serves as a constant reminder that you always need to do your best and avoid making mistakes entirely. But sometimes, the world reminds you that you are but a human, filled with flaws and susceptible to making mistakes.

Today was one of those days where I was reminded of that harsh reality, and with it came the agonizing feeling of both mediocrity and inadequacy. 

The day started off like any other day of me being stuck in a pandemic for the past two years, plain and boring. I immediately continued watching a k-drama series that I started just yesterday which I became deeply invested in. A few hours later, I had lunch and after that, I planned on taking a nap since I felt a food coma creeping in, but before I did, I saw a message on my phone of my college friends panicking in our group chat about their grade in Accounting. Seeing this, I immediately started experiencing a sense of impending doom, the food coma that was slowly creeping in instantly vanished and I rushed towards my laptop and went directly to our university’s portal to view my grade. The number that I saw on that screen made me want to burst out crying, it was as if my world was going to fall apart, the dreams and ambitions that I had seemed to slowly slip away from my grasp falling deeper and deeper to the dark void of lost hope. It was a 2.5. Such a simple number, but for us, it was a grade that signified that we failed the subject and that we should abandon our dreams of graduating with Latin honors. The overwhelming amount of pain and sorrow that I felt at that moment left me paralyzed; I just sat there looking at the screen of my laptop. From what felt like an eternity, I slowly regained awareness and immediately went to our group chat in order to vent. Needless to say, their reaction towards it wasn’t what I was expecting; they were optimistic about it. They kept convincing, what seemed like themselves, that our grades don’t define us and that we just needed to do better in the finals. I was dumbfounded, it’s as if they didn’t even take the time to grieve the loss that came with their 2.5 and 2.0 grades. I isolated myself. I felt alone in my despair. thoughts crept into my mind such as, “Am I not good enough?” “What will people think of me?” and “Am I really a failure?” I felt disappointed in myself, it was as if I let so many people down because of that number. It was utterly confusing for me since all of us worked really hard in the subject, we gained high scores in our quizzes and even gained perfect scores in all of our activities, the only low score that we gained was our midterm exam, but even then, we should’ve at least got a 3.0. I tried desperately to find an explanation, but eventually, I felt like my struggle was pointless and that I could no longer do anything about it. So alas, here we are, the day just keeps going on and on, and the disappointment that I have for myself just keeps on swelling. I fear that this will swallow me whole.

They say that “Expectation is the mother of all disappointment,” being exposed to such high expectations made me realize that it is such a toxic mindset and situation to be in, one that is enforced either by you or the people around you. It deprives you of making mistakes and it creates unnecessary consequences. Deep down, it angers me that I have to always satisfy these expectations because they were all put there without my consent, and now it’s as if I am obligated to always meet them. I wish that people knew how much their unsolicited expectations burden those who are at the receiving end of it. Ever since I became an academic achiever, I helplessly bared witness to how slowly people’s expectations of me grew. I couldn’t do anything about it since it was the only thing that made me feel as if my existence meant something, getting high grades validated my existence and made me convince myself that I wasn’t a failure. I knew that in the long run, this was going to affect me negatively, but being in the moment, I chose to be ignorant of it and just got lost in the feeling of how good it is to be looked up to by everybody. In retrospect, I acknowledge that doing well in my academics wasn’t the root of the problem, but instead the overwhelming amount of pressure that the people around me put on me. I wish that we live in a world where your existence alone validates you, and not the things that you achieve. When our achievements start to define us, we begin to establish a hyper-dependent relationship between us and our attainments; this is never an ideal situation to be in, as this introduces you to a world of torment. A world filled with disappointment, a world that stagnates your growth, a world that looks at you with a magnifying glass to see every bit of mistake that you make.

I hope that one day I can finally be freed from these chains that bind me. I wish that I no longer have to spend every day worrying about what other people might think of me whenever I commit a mistake. I want to be able to make mistakes and not be afraid about the repercussions that may come with them, I want to treat it as an opportunity to learn rather than likening it to a virus that I should stay away from. And for all of you who are like me that are struggling with high expectations, please allow yourself to make mistakes, know that failures come along with success, and always remind yourself that you are young; you have all the room in the world to grow. May we free ourselves from the chains of expectations, and may the disappointment that comes along with it crumble and get carried into the wind.