I give up

This was not a good day. I did very badly at the advanced biostats stuff, assigned a paper to the class that even *I* barely understood and I flailed my way through trying to explain it and I think I got some of it wrong.

I cancelled the paper write up over it because I couldn't make the students do a critique of an article I didn't even understand.

I just feel like a giant failure right now and it hurts A LOT because I feel like my job is literally the only thing I have going for me right now and failing at it scares me.

I mean, yeah: the upside of failing at teaching this class is that I get it taken away from me for next year and someone else does it, but the downside, which is even bigger, is the ETERNAL SHAME of having failed at something like that, and realizing that every time the person who gets given the class goes off to teach it, they will resentfully think of how stupid and underprepared I was and how they now have to do it.

I need some kind of success.

I need to feel like my life is counting for something.

And this, this ain't it, Chief.

I mean, yes, the very me thing to do, what I will do, is double down and prepare even harder for next week and not allow myself any time for relaxation or fun in this week until I am sure I am as well prepared as one humanly can be. But now I'm afraid I'm going to fail again, that I'm just doing a bad job of this, and I feel terrible. I want to crawl in a hole and hide.

I hate my life some times. I hate it more now than I have in the past. I don't know how to make it better other than working obsessively until things are as close to perfect as I can make them, which barely measures up to an actual standard.

I've *ALWAYS* failed in the clutch - the senior project we did in high school? That we all prepared for for like a year? I earned basically a B- on it because I choked and couldn't find a good topic. I failed out of grad school the first time I tried. My first year teaching evaluations were a disaster, and I still get unflattering comments. I choked at my one and only piano recital. I have more rejected papers in mouldering piles of bits on my computer than I care to think about.

The reason I have no legacy, the reason I'll be forgotten 15 minutes after I'm gone, is that I fundamentally am a failure. I was built up so much as a supposedly-"gifted" kid (really: I was just compliant and sometimes had a freakish memory and was hyperlexical at a young age) that I thought I could actually BE something, but I can't. I'm nothing. I'm no good at anything.

The sooner I accept that maybe the happier I will be.

And I don't understand why there are so many people in positions of power who fail just as hard as I do, or worse, and yet seem utterly blithe about it, that it doesn't seem to bother them, or more, they act like every failure is someone else's fault. When I know every time and every way in which I've failed is that I'm simply not good enough. Never good enough.

"This poor little caryatid has fallen under the load. She’s a good girl—look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her failure, not blaming anyone, not even the gods . . . and still trying to shoulder her load, after she’s crumpled under it. But she’s more than good art denouncing bad art; she’s a symbol for every woman who ever shouldered a load too heavy. But not alone women—this symbol means every man and woman who ever sweated out life in uncomplaining fortitude until they crumpled under their loads."

But I no longer believe the "victory in defeat" part so I won't quote it here. There is no victory in defeat, no victory in not being good enough but trying anyway. Success is the only thing and I guess I can't succeed, at least not at this. 

And, yes, yes:

But at the same time: I hate failing. I hate feeling less good at things. I hate having to work so hard for what feels like not much success. I hate feeling the shame of not being as good as I think i should be.