Failing Forwards

The final frontier has never been something I was super interested in. Sure, the concept is cool, and I do not mind passively learning about it, but it wouldn’t be something I would personally go out of my way to study. But, half of my family is absolutely obsessed with space. Because of this, we’ve gone on vacations to see every Saturn IV, have model rockets in our house, and have a bunch of memorabilia with the iconic quote “failure is not an option” on it. I’ll often jokingly complain about finding it boring, but I’ve always gone along with it for the most part.

“Failure is not an option.” — Gene Kranz

Besides being space nerds, my sisters and I are all nerds in general. I spent most of my free time in middle school with my nose in a book, to the point where it actually hurt my grades. While we are all typically overachievers, I often felt like the slacker of the family.

It’s hard to say this without sounding completely self-absorbed, but I am naturally very intelligent. I always had the best test scores but also the most missed homework. However, my parents have always expected the best from my sisters and me, and we all typically deliver. In this sense, the iconic quote did not just refer to space for us. It was a reminder that we weren’t allowed to fail. To me, the message was clear; succeed or die trying.

This is a line I felt like I was tiptoeing along for most of high school. In reality, I almost always had As and Bs at the end of a semester. Despite that, it still felt like I was always close to doing the forbidden; failing. Deep down, I knew something was wrong, but it felt easier to believe I was just lazy, so I told no one.

My junior year of high school was the first time I came close to failing. I had finally gotten into honors math, and I was struggling. The teacher was no help, despite how much I asked. I considered going to my counselor to ask for a tutor, but that felt like it would be a form of failure. Instead, I made a deal with myself. Either I would pass the next test, or I would die trying. Then, I did not pass that test. And failure was not an option. So I left the classroom and ran to my bathroom, where I began hyperventilating. I forget what happened after that, but I passed the class very narrowly.

The following year, I kept having similar issues with completing assignments. My mother would beg me to tell her why, and because I could not answer, it often devolved into arguments. Usually, these ended with me running into my bathroom, where I’d try to stay silent as I gasped for air.

Then, one of these arguments occurred as my mom was driving me to a band concert, and there was nowhere for me to run. I’ll never forget her asking me, “Is it depression or anxiety?” The question quite literally took my breath away, and I began to panic. This wasn’t the first time I had a panic attack, but it was the first time with someone else there. We drove in circles around the school while I calmed down, and my mom offered to take me home. But, going home meant failing band, so that wasn’t an option.

The next week, I had a check-up with my pediatrician. My mom picked me up from school early and dropped me off in front of the building before parking. When I entered the office, I was handed a form for a depression test. My mind began to race as I assumed my mother must have called and told them what was happening.

Honestly, I would have expected to feel relief. I had known for so long that I had depression, and I thought I wanted help, but when confronted with it, all I felt was shame. In my mind, I had such a privileged life. I had no reason to feel sad, numb, or hopeless as I often did. I fought through the shame and filled out the test honestly. After this, I was so on edge that all it took was the doctor asking how school was for me to go into another attack. I honestly cannot remember what exactly I said, but in the end, the doctor threw out the depression test saying, “I don’t think you’re depressed, I think you have anxiety, and that makes you sad.”

At the time, I felt relieved. For some reason, anxiety seemed much more palatable than depression. Anxiety simply meant I worried about things, and using that label did not give away the true darkness I felt.

Over time, I became more comfortable with my anxiety diagnosis. My therapist was kind and mostly let me talk away for all of our sessions. I spoke of surface-level anxieties regarding school and my friendships, and she did help me. So much so that I convinced myself I no longer needed therapy and that going off to college was the cure.

Shockingly, college did not magically cure my anxiety or my hidden depression. Instead, they were enabled by the freedom I gained. While I loved the independence, it was bittersweet. On the one hand, it made me confident in taking care of myself. On the other, when I was down, there was no one stopping me from spending days on end not leaving my bed.

In October of my final year of college, I lost my grandfather. This sent my world screeching to a halt, and it was as if the jolt from the sudden stop sent everything crashing to the ground around me. I stopped attending class, seeing my friends, and caring for myself. I would wear the same clothes for days, lying in bed, eating junk, and watching TV shows I can barely remember the plot of now.

Then, the worst happened. I failed a class, and it looked like I wasn’t going to graduate college in only three years as planned. When I saw that letter on my transcript, it was as if my world jolted back into motion, popping the comfortable bubble of numbness I had been living in. I failed, but failure wasn’t an option. So I thought that it was the end of the world.

This realization actually left me quite serene. It felt like the eye of the hurricane. I took a shower, taking care to clean and comb out my hair, and allowed the water to flow over me until it ran cold. I remember picking out and putting on my comfiest outfit. The world was ending, and I thought I had accepted it, but then I began to panic again.

The eye of the hurricane had passed, but in the midst of my crisis, I had a realization: I didn’t want my world to end. So I called for help. I didn’t feel brave at the time, just desperate and scared.

A few months later, my family visited the Kennedy Space Center, and that stupid quote seemed to be everywhere. I hated it. To me, it was a constant reminder of what I had been through.

On that fateful day that I asked for help, I ended up being loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital, where I spent a week in the psych ward. The next month consisted of a daily intensive outpatient program and evenings spent trying to catch up on school work after a semester of doing nothing. While it was a necessary period of healing for me, it is not something I enjoyed being reminded of, particularly the failure which triggered it. But, as I thought about it more, I realized that the quote was just fundamentally wrong. Failure is always an option, but it is essential that one fails forwards.

What failing forwards means to me is taking a failure, learning from it, and moving forwards. My lessons from that failure were numerous. First and most importantly was that failure is not the end of the world, nor is it final. I also learned the importance of self-compassion and that I can always ask for help. I have not mastered any of these concepts yet, but what’s important is that I am slowly but surely making progress.

The quote “failure is not an option” comes from the movie Apollo 13, which is about the space mission by the same name. That mission was meant to land on the moon but malfunctioned and had to emergency land back on earth. Everyone survived the mission, but I would still classify it as a failure. They set out to land on the moon, and they did not achieve that goal. And that’s okay because they failed forwards. Despite failing at their desired outcome, they managed to survive and learned from what went wrong to prevent it from happening during future space missions.

Looking at the story from that perspective has made it infinitely more relatable and inspirational. If the people behind the Apollo missions can fail and learn from it, so can I. And I firmly believe that I have. After my failure, I was able to make things right and still managed to graduate in three years. It was not easy, but in reference to another famous space quote, we do not do things because they are easy, but because they are hard.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” — President John F. Kennedy

It would be easy to end the story there, with me graduating college and living happily ever after, but that would be dishonest. In life, there is no happily ever after, and I am learning to be okay with that. Quite frankly, I currently still have more downs than ups. But as I continue therapy and figure out what medicine is best for me, I may not quite have faith that it will all work out, but I at least have hope. And for now, that is enough.

Failure is always an option, but it is essential that one fails forwards.