My Biggest Fear

This is sort of a tough one for me actually. If you asked me a couple years ago this would have been a very simple answer "Failure" but now that I have a child my biggest fear is losing him/something happening to him. I think this is probably every (good) parent's worst fear though so today I am going to talk about my overwhelming fear of failure.

I know it probably sounds silly and irrational but failure just isn't in my vocabulary. It is not an outcome that I have on the table to choose from. My parents always expected a lot from me and I wasn't rewarded for doing well, if I didn't do well it was "WHY DID YOU GET A 'B' IN THAT CLASS" or something along those lines. Second best was just that, second. 

I have always been competitive and all of my friend will agree that when it comes to a game or competition I am "in it to win it" which I think is healthy and important. Who wants to do things with someone who doesn't put in effort and care about winning?! Certainly not me.

I think, however, that while failure scares the crap out of me I need to learn that it is ok also. I need to learn that sometimes I am going to fail and that it is ok. Infertility was something that really hit me hard because no matter what I did, how hard I tried, or how much effort I put in I could NOT GET PREGNANT. I was literally losing my mind over it. Not only for the obvious reasons but because I felt so out of control and like such a failure. This wasn't acceptable and I immediately, upon realizing that I may just be a total failure at reproducing, signed up for grad school. I was gonna prove that I could succeed gosh darn it!!! So succeed I did. I got into the program I wanted, the quarter I wanted, for the specialty I wanted and I went through it with a 3.9 GPA. TAKE THAT FAILURE!!!!

You know what that taught me? That no matter what I do some things are out of my hands. I went through, and still struggle with, major depression and anxiety. My fear of failure is debilitating. I can spend every moment planning out how to succeed but sometimes I just cannot do it.

So while this is ONE of my biggest fears I know that it is one that I must tackle, and I am trying.