Community Voices: Failure and Guilty Dogs
Welcome to a new section of Not-Falling Blog — Community Voices! Part “Letters to the Editor,” part “Reader Memoirs,” This new section allows us to dialogue with our readers about what’s going on in their lives, and the experiences they have to share.
Today’s Community Voice is Rainer, a friend and reader who is joining us in Not Falling (literally and metaphorically) to share his battles against shame and guilt.
Thank you, Rainer. We are cheering for you, and grateful for you.
Want to write your own “Community Voice” post? Message us on IG @NotFallingBlog
A candid photo of Rainer’s monster and an energy drink.
Failure and Guilty Dogs
By Rainer
Hey there. I’m writing today about messing up in life and not knowing if that’s all I’ll ever be. Well, we do fail. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. We won’t always fail. We won’t.
Uhm… right, well I think introductions are in order.
So, let’s establish some credentials:
My name is Rainer, and I am a 24 year old professional “guy”. I have a State license in Crying and an Associate's degree in the field of Feeling Unwell, from… Harvard. Don’t get it wrong though, I am just as qualified to have an opinion or a soul, as you are too. With that out of the way, we are now acquaintances– no, we are friends! This is how it has to be, since this is my entry, and I– unfortunately, am the ruling authority in this browser tab.
What I’m trying to say with all of this so far is, I've lived longer than some, I've lived "less" than others, but at the end of the day I'm still here. Still kicking. I'm not a self-made millionaire, I'm on my 6th attempt at quitting smoking, never finished college, never stayed at one job for more than 2 years, I failed my first two drivers' tests, and I'm single where all my old friends are years into their relationships. Some of them even married already.
I’m constantly surrounded by reminders of all that I am not.
I am not a good man.
I am not a good friend.
I am not a good partner.
I am not a good son.
I am not a good human.
So friend, let’s chat!
Guilt’s a funny thing. In the sense that, well, it makes no sense for us to possess the capacity to feel guilt. There’s that silly quote about a dog weeping over its kill, and how it has no more honor than the dog that doesn’t.
While true on its face, we were taught to not judge a book by its cover, weren’t we? We’ll come back to this later on, but for now, tell whoever said that, that they’re not invited to my birthday party.
Speaking of birthday parties, I turned 24 about two months ago. There you go, you already forgot to give me a gift, and failed me as a friend. Put a dollar in the failure piggy bank for that one. It’s alright though, no hard feelings. Hopefully you’ve got some cash saved up there already, I know you shoooouuuuld!
Hey, I think it’s time I share a bit about myself, since we’ve known each other long enough, right? Won’t be too weird? Cool.
So I mentioned that quote earlier, the one about the weeping dogs. Thing is, they’re both killers. They have hurt something, mauled it with jagged teeth and a jaw strong enough to fragment bone. Guilt doesn’t save what was hurt. It just hurts that sad little dog. That dog, the one that weeps, it knows what it did. That dog, like you and I, understands the pain it inflicts.
I hurt someone, you know. Someone who I was set to spend the rest of my life with. Sure, there’s a mountain the size of Everst worth of context, but what is that in the face of the simple, clinical fact, that I am an utter failure who put his hands on a woman? Well, I was scared. Well, I was angry. Well, I spent two years trying, 16 hours a day trying, 7 days a week trying, to be someone I never even was, and I failed. I tried to protect this person from themselves, and I failed. I tried to sit there and take the verbal assault, hear the threats of violence, listen to pleas for my own death, and to be cut and hurt and beaten by her, to take all of this in stride and to find a happy solution and, boy I FAILED. Before I knew it, my right hand went open and started soaring through the air, landing squarely on her left cheek.
That’s quite a bit saved up in my failure piggy bank. Wow, I can almost make rent.
It was impossible to grasp everything that took place. All at once I was both the dog and its prey. I was reeling in a frenzy of doubt, failure, grief, and an overwhelming sense of shame, never once considering anything except that I am an eternal failure, meant to hide my tear soaked face from the world, forever. It took me quite a bit of time (and money), just to even approach the idea that people in traumatic situations, like the one I was in, tend to act unlike themselves. This didn’t change the fact of what I had done, just reframed it.
I think that’s a good place to start.
My hands are still dirty, no matter how many fancy soaps I wash them with. I have still failed in my original goal, to be a good person throughout my life, to just… not fail. All the context in the world can’t save that. I still feel guilty, I still feel ashamed, frustrated.
But you know, what? I am still kicking.
I can still breathe. I cough up a wad of remorse and phlegm every morning, afternoon, and night. I've failed so much in such a short life, but I'm still here. Still kicking. Just as I have the capacity to fail, I have the capacity to succeed as well. I don’t need to regale you with all the stories of all the kittens I saved from trees, because I don’t need witnesses, I just need your trust. The same trust I offer to you, for you to do the same. To do better, to succeed. I am not doomed to eternity in Hell because, well, Hell is empty, and guess what! You’re not gonna be there either. (Yeah, sorry, but we’ll have to miss that one.) That’s the mindset of the late Pope Francis, someone with a bit more authority on the topic than me, a guy (even a professional one). So fail as hard as you want, as hard as you can, it doesn’t matter. You still have the right to your own feelings, you still deserve to have a soul that is screaming as loud as it can to be saved.
And it can be saved.
You can be saved.
You can succeed.
Don’t let your shame tell you otherwise.
(Need to talk to someone? You can have a confidential conversation with a real person at any time by texting “D2L” to “91627” from your phone or mobile device.
Your text will be answered by a live Hope Coach.)
Shame. Shame is married to failure, and it’s having a messy affair with guilt at the same time. Those guys, they’re a nasty bunch, they're on their 6th divorce and counting. But they never stay in your life long enough to matter, and should hold no say in what you do next. You can imagine it like, a pair of estranged relatives. You know, you might see them around on the Holidays, but you probably won’t really listen to their thoughts on the current President. They’ll tell you all that you need to know in order to lead a life as unstable as theirs. When has taking out more loans ever hurt anybody?
Never let your shame or guilt dictate what you do with yourself, unless it's to learn from your failures. You’re always going to be better at what you failed at the second time around, even if just a teeny tiny bit, even microscopically so. You’re smarter now, your senses sharper, your wit that much stronger. You could host a lecture on what you failed at, and I would happily sit front and center! You can’t always make it right, but God damn you sure can do better than before.
I know you can. We’re friends, after all.
So be smart. Don’t let your guilt take you places you don’t belong.
It’s so normal to fail. It is so unbearably, painfully, agonizingly normal to fail. It is normal to let people down, and it’s even more normal to feel awful about it. To err is to be human. We never want to fail, we never want that embarrassment, we don’t want to be hurt like the dog and the bloodied pile of prey in its mouth. But sometimes it just happens. Like me, you probably failed too, maybe a little. Or a lot. You failed someone, maybe a lot of people, maybe just yourself. Maybe you failed me? Well I mean, yeah just a tiny bit, but that’s water under the bridge, I always accept late birthday gifts.
So what makes it all better? Can you just apologize, hug it out? Well, sometimes, but not always.
Sometimes it stays. Somewhere deep. And you can't quite cough it up, it lines your lungs now. It's harder to breathe. You'll keep failing and I will too. We're going to fail over and over and over and over again. You better enjoy your failures while you can, because you will get it right someday.