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On failure

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The past month is a beautiful, colorful blur. I saw some of the people I love the most, traveled around Mexico, and attended the Fulbright midterm reunion on the coast of Oaxaca, where bright blue water brushes over bright white sand. It was a month of gratefulness; it was a month of reflection.

I learned lots at the Fulbright reunion, but this is what has stuck with me the most: While there, someone I didn’t really know apologized to me for something I hadn’t realized he had done. It was not an apology I was owed, but it was given to me honestly and publicly and bravely.

The story behind the apology is not mine to tell, but I can tell you how it made me feel: like a fresh coat of paint over a dinged-up wall, like when you can’t see the sun yet but it’s not dark out anymore. It made me think about the ways we hurt each other without knowing, about how we fail ourselves and others everyday but usually keep it a secret. It made me realize that the best thing we can do about both of those problems is to approach them with honesty.

The last book I read in 2019 was Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In The Dream House, and I keep returning to its prologue, where Machado writes about archives — the “violence of the archive,” “archival silence,” the archive as a political act. “How do we do right by the wronged people of the past without physical evidence of their suffering?” she asks. “How do we direct our record keeping toward justice?”

Machado files her own story into the archive in order to demonstrate that “domestic abuse between partners who share a gender identity is both possible and not uncommon.” But she also delivers a broader message about the stories we tell about ourselves and others, the stories we choose not to tell, and the ways we present and preserve those stories.

This is what made the apology I was given last week all the more remarkable. Publicly acknowledging our failures, making them a part of our story, archiving them honestly, is so rare it sometimes feels revolutionary.

I think back to my journalism professors who taught me how to create an online portfolio and then graded me on the way I presented myself to the world. “Curate your image,” they would tell me. “Remember your personal brand.” We were supposed to come up with a three- or four-word catch phrase to summarize who we were and what we brought to the table. The first word that came to my mind was “confused,” but I settled on something like “storyteller.”

But as I choose to share my experiences through this blog, I’m trying to think less about my personal brand and more about my person — that is, who I honestly am and am becoming.

So here, I want to acknowledge the ways I’ve failed over the past few months. I fill this empty screen with a plea for forgiveness — from others, but mostly from myself. I offer an apology not necessarily because it is owed, but because of the way doing so makes me feel, like painting over a dinged-up wall, like soaking up the first bits of light in the morning, when you can’t see the sun yet but it’s not dark out anymore.

I failed every time I prioritized efficiency over connection, rushing through conversations with coworkers or students or the kind man who bagged my groceries in order to return to some vague and unimportant item on my to-do list like “email XX back.”
I failed when I taught my students how to write an essay with a beginning, middle and end — because that is what they needed to do to pass a test — but excluded from my lesson that most things worth writing don’t follow a linear path anyway, and most endings are only bandaids.
I failed each day that I dealt with my anxiety by over-scheduling myself, overworking myself, inventing pressure and deadlines so I wouldn’t have to sit alone with my thoughts, so I wouldn’t have to simply be, the idea of which gave me more anxiety than anything else.
I failed when I got annoyed that students didn’t do homework, allowing my frustration to melt into judgment despite the fact that I had no idea what other pressures life may have been suffocating them with.
I failed every time I sent an email or a message launching into a question or request without first asking someone how they were, falling victim to my American-bred addiction to efficiency and again passing over an opportunity for connection.
I failed each time I felt ashamed of my mixing of Spanish and English or frustrated at my students’, when instead I should have acknowledged the beauty and sacredness of the time we spent searching for the right words and stumbling over false cognates. During that time we invented our own language, a language that is a testament to our searching for answers and creating them.
I failed a lot saying “tú” when I should have said “usted” or “usted” when I should have said “tú.” The excuse for this in my head is that we don’t have an equivalent in English, so it is a natural error. But the truth is that in every language there are words that convey respect and hierarchy, and I am still learning how to use them — and also how not to.
I failed every time I opened up Instagram with the unspoken goal of comparing my life to others’ and always walked away feeling competitive and inadequate instead of grateful.
I failed when I didn’t bring 100% of my energy to my classes, and also when I wasn’t able to acknowledge and accept the days when I didn’t have 100% of my energy to bring anywhere.
I failed each time I didn’t breathe the ocean air in deeply and celebrate the beauty of here, not there, and now, not later.
If it’s you I failed, I’m sorry.

I am thankful for the ability to fail and move forward, for the space and time to think about my failures and write about them. It is a privilege that not everyone has, and it is a therapeutic one. Apologizing is not the same as regretting — to apologize is to plant a seed fertilized with honesty.

So if you’re reading this, if you made it this far, thank you. Thank you for letting me fail. I’m moving into the second semester of my grant and the first year of this decade with so much gratitude, carrying everything I’ve learned from my failures and really, really trying to use it to be better. Echándole ganas.

With love and acceptance,

Mia

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