Hashtag Fail

I have never been one to back down from a challenge or to give up, nor am I one to accept failure. I work hard at everything I attempt and most of the time I succeed, but let’s face it, I am just an human being, not a machine (unfortunately), so of course from time to time I do fail. 
Being born a stubborn, hard-at-work Taurus with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, I was built to face combative days. On my first day of school, I had to prove to everyone that I could attempt and succeed in whatever it was they thought I could not do. At the age of eleven, I was diagnosed with a neurological muscle disease: abnormal myoclonic dystonia (fancy for “your muscles move by themselves whenever the hell they feel like it”), forcing me to adjust to a new lifestyle composed with muscle aches, a wheelchair, insomnia, and more challenges. The biggest of these, I know, was school. Because Osteogenesis Imperfecta and AMD are conflictual, I ended up in a vicious circle. AMD would tire me so much that I would break a bone, the stress of the broken bone would worsen AMD and cause my muscles to jerk like maniacs, which lead to pain and finally to depression. Being a strong-headed fighter, I decided I wasn’t having it that way, my diseases would not win, and would certainly not keep me from reaching my goals. Middle school was a breeze and then I went into high school.

In my mind, everything was planned put perfectly: three years of high school, pass my exams, graduate, and go into college. Easy-peasy…well,not that easy. My AMD got worse and worse over the years, causing me to me to miss school more than anyone would in a lifetime. So much, in fact, that it started to jeopardize my future, my perfectly planned future with no room for the unwanted, stinky, shameful failure. When I reached the “high school senior” status, I worked harder to pass my exams and so I could get the hell out of high school. Not doing this was not on my list.

The craziest, most-unlikely-to-ever-happen-in-a-million-years kind of things, however, were on my list. Things like surviving a flying shark attack and retaking my exams at other time, or fighting aliens, causing chaos around town during the exams. Those were on my list, not failure. The possibility did occur to me, but I brushed it off because I had worked so hard to get to this point. I was not going to let a tiny thought or a stupid doubt get to me.

Obviously this long tirade was purposefully made to lead somewhere. I failed my exam! I had a hard time accepting it (to be honest, I still haven’t accept it). When you work hard at something, don’t you expect at list a minimum of success? Even if you spend the rest of the time telling yourself you could have done better? I know I do. Mind you, I had failed before, but there’s something about this particular time that makes it different to me. I can’t put my finger on what makes it so different from the other times; maybe it’s because I had planned out everything and so I expected everything to fall into place as I wanted. Or maybe it is because this exam is the main key to reaching my goals and achieving my dreams. Whatever the reason, all I know is there is not enough tea and chocolate in this world to make it all better.