“We are all failures - at least the best of us are.” - J.M. Barrie

Do you ever feel like you're constantly trying to start over? You find yourself chasing your proverbial tail around in circles and promising yourself that tomorrow will be the day it all changes. But somehow it never really does change, and you're not sure what's gone wrong with you. Really, you're desperately trying to make up for something in your life that you perceive as a gigantic failure.

We all carry our failures around with us. We don't want to let them go because they feel like solid, safe places to point back to as we try to navigate in a chaotic and constantly changing world. But our past "failures" are only as solid as our attitudes about them. Because contrary to how tangible you believe your personal failure to be, it is completely abstract, inconstant and adjustable. Yes, events happened in the past and yes, you were lucky enough to have been apart of those irrevocable histories. But at this moment they no longer exist except as perceptions of your memory. You can't change the event because it doesn't exist anymore. But you can change how your perception will affect your future.

First, it is imperative to decipher the difference between what truly is a personal failure and what is something out of your control. Because everyday we are pulled backwards by the ownership of about 16,459 "failures" that were never truly ours. It is amazing the amount of things we kind, empathetic humans will take complete credit for just because we saw it happen. Or because it happened to us. Or because we feel responsible to fix something. Or because we want to feel important. (Yes, failure makes us feel important.)

Your parents divorce isn't your fault. The death of a loved one isn't your fault. Homelessness isn't your fault. Being single isn't your fault. Your body-type isn't your fault. Your sexuality isn't your fault. Being abused isn't your fault. Your partner's cheating isn't your fault. Cancer isn't your fault. People being rude to you isn't your fault. Your sister's life decisions aren't your fault. Heck, anyone's life decisions aren't your fault. Your dad's embarrassing sense of humor isn't your fault. Your embarrassing sense of humor isn't your fault. Having a differing opinion or perception isn't your fault. Changing your mind isn't your fault. Being discriminated isn't your fault. Feeling hurt without knowing why isn't your fault. Being afraid isn't your fault.

To be honest, the list of common non failures could fill a Webster dictionary. And the list of uncommon, personalized non failures we've created for ourselves could stretch to the moon and back. We're addicted to them. And maybe that means we're a little addicted to the idea of failure?

What if in reality it was so impossible to truly fail that even the most successful and intelligent people barely touched on it in their lifetimes? Because the older I get, the more I see the concept of failure as starkly debatable, even cartoonish, in the face of such a complicated and ineffable current that is life. We all have our own personal responsibilities in this world (that are individually quite small in the grand scheme of things) and I am positive that learning by making mistakes is one of those responsibilities. So how can failure mean anything about your worth, your intelligence or your right to happiness if failure is only a figment of your imagination?

You don't need to start over. You don't need to make up for anything in your past. You don't even need to apologize. Your perception of your personal history can be your source of pain or your most powerful tool to not only to move forward confidently, but to appreciate all that life has exposed you to. Being thankful and awestruck by your failures, mistakes, learning is the nicest thing you could ever do for yourself.

Like Jesus does...

When I hear my alarm go off in the pitch blackness of 6am (I know, right. Summer's ghost haunts me every morning I wake up and see the sky a little bit darker and darker...) I usually try to wake my brain up with some good old fashion phone time. Honestly, I know we all do it, and I also know it's probably not the best way to wake up by teaching my brain that the thing it really needs to be functional again is to stare at a screen -- but that's for another post!

This morning during my half-conscious facebook browsing I came across an article that was posted. A typical bullet-style piece detailing the "3 Ways We Can End Fake Relationships Forever." From the title alone, it looks like this article has every cure we've ever dreamed of for our relationship ails! And on the whole, I think the article is right in a lot of ways. As I read through it with bleary eyes I felt comforted by the truths I couldn't yet articulate so well. And for those of you who have not stopped to read the article yet, or if you simply don't plan to, I can sum up the piece by saying that, basically, this "truth" is that true love is not selfish and self-serving. And if you find yourself being in a relationship simply for your own comfort or sense of status, then you should reevaluate your feelings and motives.

I like that. But what I don't like is how impossible this translates into the hearts of humans. I have yet to meet a single person in my life that has come anywhere close to mastering pure, selfless, Godly love. So screw you, easy bullet points of truth, because you've only told me what the unattainable ideal is without acknowledging how hard it is to get there! And not only that, but part of me is attached to the juiciness of life that comes from the messy, selfish, angry bits of love. It would be pretty damn boring to just go along with everything that your love "thought was right for them" because you loved them in a truly selfless way. In fact, it'd only be boring on a good day, on most days it'd be excruciating to put up with.

Love is a partnership, a bond together, an ethereal agreement. Even the love that you have for yourself is this way. Who is loving whom when you show love to yourself? As singular as one mind in one body looks in the physical form, inwardly there is a constant watching and examining of seemingly separate parts working as one. So even with self-love, there is a natural give and take, maybe even a bit of darkness and a bit of light.

So how can two people agree to love each other completely selflessly without also hurting themselves in the process? ... Maybe hurt just is the process? The hurt your ego feels through being exposed to the unpredictable will of another person might be just the thing you need to wake up and realize that it's not really about you in the love agreement. Your personal comfort and fear of losing [fill in the blank] are not what's important to the love you create outside of yourself that is much bigger than you. (And not only is it bigger than you, but it's stronger than you, can outrun you and will most certainly outlast your mental will even when you've cursed love to die in your most dark and sinful moments.) Love agreements are amazing because despite seeming irrational to the human mind at times, we adopt them anyway and are taken in crazy directions that we never knew we'd go, all for the sake of experiencing much more growth and adventure than the love we harbor for ourselves could provide.

Anyway, I have no idea what I'm doing in relationships, really. But it's only very recently that I'd be willing to admit that. I think allowing ourselves to get entangled in deep love that's messy, unpredictable and oftentimes painful is possibly the first step, a test if you will, towards being truly selfless. For me it is anyway. Because when I take the pressure off of myself to be so perfect with love in every way (just in order to feel deserving of love) I allow others to do the same.

"Do the Thing that You are Afraid to Do"

A few months ago I found myself as a new resident of Washington, D.C. on my birthday. I was so new to the city, in fact, that I found myself unable to make social plans for the occasion because I felt I hadn't yet created many strong social bonds. My go-to remedy for this dilemma? Go on a solo adventure to Ocean City, Maryland.

I've been doing this forever. As a little girl, I would spend hours daydreaming in the trees and wilderness of Colorado on my own – dancing with the endless imagination in my head. As a child it was simply natural, uninhibited, and a welcomed response for escaping the boredom of having no one to play with. I can honestly say that those years of exercising my need for adventure while on my lonesome successfully primed me to be an adult individual who's not afraid of participating in any activity on her own. But as I left adolescence, and felt the presence of intellect and self-consciousness creep in, another unwanted component became something of a parasite on my adventures alone: A sense of loneliness, and the realization that maybe being alone wasn't completely fulfilling.

Not that this feeling stopped me from doing all and everything that I wanted to do. In a lot of ways, this new little cloud that hung over my exuberant plans served as fuel to push myself even harder to prove that young women could do anything they wanted, especially on their own. Don't have a man? Fuck it, go to Barcelona on your own and drink flaming shots with a handsome Spaniard who doesn't speak English. Don't have any good friends around to have a girl's night with? Put on a black dress, grab your red lipstick, and treat yourself to wine and oysters anyway.

I definitely find the idea of “dating yourself” (I know, it has become silly and cliché to say but it still rings true) as honorable, and even necessary in some ways, to a 21^st century woman's sense of accomplishment and self-esteem. I'm also a strong believer in Eleanor Roosevelt's words: Do the thing you're afraid to do. And for most young women who are just coming into themselves, the thing that they are afraid to do is own their power and ability to enjoy their own company, in public, completely on their own.

But in my case, I was beginning to deceive myself. I hadn't realized that I had become a master at what so many other young people were still just discovering in themselves. And not only was I blind to my own mastery, I was using my skills to escape my true fears by pretending I was afraid of something that in reality I was quite comfortable with. I had become so good at empowering myself to be alone, that I neglected ever developing my ability to express vulnerability with other people.

My solo birthday trip to Ocean City came up just a hair short of being a complete emotional disaster. I had booked myself a hotel just outside the beach, and as I pulled up after my three-hour drive from D.C., I opened my room to see a big, beautiful bed waiting for me – but I was not met with the expected feeling of self-indulgence and pampering that I longed for. In that doorway, I felt myself standing at the dark precipice of loneliness. And this, my friends, annoyed me to no end. I was determined to fight off the feeling with a long bubble bath, salty snacks, and as much “So You Think You Can Dance” as I could get. As usual, I was using the feeling of loneliness to fuel myself to be even more alone, and to like it, damn it!

But no matter what I did for myself, I only felt worse as my birthday dragged on. I was beginning to feel sorry for myself. I was beginning to feel unloved, and even worse, unlovable, because I was starting to believe the tragic story that was creating itself in my mind about how pathetic it was to be young, beautiful, and utterly alone on your 27^th birthday. And it really was pathetic – not because it was true, but because I was leaving out the minor detail that it was entirely my choice to be alone on my birthday. No one told me to go to the island of lost, young and beautiful 27-year-olds because nobody loved me. I chose to go there.

I didn't dare ask a single friendly face or acquaintance if they'd like to join me. I didn't even realize, until after it was all said and done, that there was no way that I would have put myself into that kind of vulnerable position to get rejected. I was so good at making plans on my own that I once again decided to forgo the chance to get what I really craved - connection, intimacy, trust, community, fun! – in order to protect myself from the fact that I might not get it even if I asked for it.

I was back at work after my birthday weekend had passed and coworkers casually chatted about how their weekends had gone. When I was asked I'd tell them that it was my birthday over the weekend and I'd spent it in Ocean City. Without mentioning that I'd gone alone, I'd go on about how nice it was to lay on the beach again but how terrible the traffic was coming back into D.C., and they would knowingly nod in agreement and then shuffle back to their desks. But I had one coworker who was particularly thoughtful and intuitive. After I told him about my weekend adventure, he leaned in and quietly said You went there alone, didn't you... I was taken aback by his insight, and felt a pang of emotion in the place where the loneliness had been. Everyone else had assumed I'd gone with some gaggle of anonymous, smiling friends; but his comment about the reality of my situation created the moment of intimacy that I'd been too afraid to conjure up on my own. That's really brave, you know. Not a lot of people could do that, he continued. I simply smiled, and said I know. I was distracted by the odd burning my behind my eyes.

There's a lot of fine lines in life. (Seriously, people are throwing out “fine lines” like they're going out of style. We're basically living in a spider's web with all these fine lines.) But unfortunately I've found another one. There's a fine line between doing what you're afraid to do just to save face and doing what you're really afraid to do to save your soul. Women (no, everyone!) should be comfortable spending time doing exciting/challenging things on their own. Not just simple things like getting a pedicure without your usual buddy; but doing big, important things on their own so that they feel empowered to take on any situation life throws at them knowing full well that they can handle whatever, come what may.

But don't confuse self-empowerment as a replacement for the social intimacy that we all need to survive. That's exactly where I found myself on my birthday when I deceived myself into thinking that it was easier to go it alone than to risk getting my sensitive heart trampled on by a rejection or two. But in life, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And even if I had taken a shot and missed on that birthday adventure, at least I would have had built some strength and character behind the attempt.

Don't think that because I've recently had this insight that I've suddenly changed my fearful ways overnight. I still do a lot of things alone that I secretly wish I could be doing with fellow awesome people. I'm not yet sure how to share my vulnerability, my desire to connect, to openly express my true feelings with the people around me that I like or am attracted to – I'm working on it. Now that I recognize the avoidance I was creating in my life by hiding behind a false sense of empowerment, I'm certainly in a better place to discredit the story of being on the island of lost, young and beautiful 27-year-olds... That sounds like it could be a really great reality TV show though!