Yet another failure to add to the list – a now almost endless list of all the failures of my life. I think, I have no chance of ever remembering them all now.
What failure, you ask?
If you’ve read my blog for a while, you probably remember that I had surgery in my shoulder about 2 years ago and that even though the surgery in itself was fine, I ended up with frozen shoulder. I worked very hard for a year and finally the pain improved and mobility started to return. I was told my shoulder would be back to normal this coming summer and that I would most certainly be ready to start culinary school in January – which I did.
Then the covid-19 lockdown happened, and all the schools closed down. For a couple of months we had online classes, mostly theory but also practical classes that took place in our own kitchens.
We didn’t get proper breaks during those long days with mainly theory, which meant long hours sitting almost motionless in front of a camera staring at a screen.
I didn’t have a proper PC, I didn’t have a proper table – even though my chair is fine, the table is too low and over time it became quite painful. I started getting more pains and aches in my body but didn’t worry too much about it.
Then the migraines came, but still, I didn’t worry too much. The last thing to happen was losing mobility in right arm– suddenly I could no longer effortlessly reach the top shelves in the kitchen but had to struggle to get things down.
That’s when I started to worry. I knew I had exercised less since school started, because I simply had less time and that before I had actually exercised a lot at different times during the day. I just didn’t think all these things would make such a big difference.
My new surgeon (my old one changed jobs) was less optimistic when I met him at my last check up and he told me that I might need surgery again. I asked for a different option and he agreed that I could try and see if I could turn things around within the next couple of months. So, now I am on sick leave for about 2 months to try and see if I can get better with physiotherapy and more intense rehabilitation.
My guidance counselor at culinary school asked me to take this time to really think things through, because being a chef is hard work. He said that even if I get better, perhaps I would not last long working as a chef. My teacher pretty much told everyone in my class that I quit school, even though I am only on sick leave. None of this makes me feel very optimistic, quite the opposite.
Other people, when I tell them of this, they keep talking about how I should continue and fight for it, how everything will be fine and that I should not lose hope. They make it sound like if I quit culinary school because of my shoulder I am weak or a failure or both. They make me feel terrible because I am considering quitting simply because of a bit of a shoulder injury.
Everyone makes me feel horrible about this choice I have to make; my teachers asked me to quit, but honestly, I am pretty sure they were already looking for an excuse to throw me out because I am more trouble than I am worth, and everyone else continues to try and cheer me up and support me going back – even after I tell them it makes me feel bad because the school doesn’t want me back.
I don’t understand what I did to be so disliked, I never understand why I am disliked everywhere I go.
I didn’t hurt my shoulder because I wanted to, but I will do anything I can to make sure I protect myself in the future. I don’t want another surgery, but if I need it to get better, I’ll do it. I want to be healthy and have a strong body, so that I can do all the things I have yet to do in life.
There are still so many places in the world I haven’t seen, so many experiences yet to have. I can’t do any of that if I continue like this – in pain with increasingly limited mobility in my entire body every day.
I had thought that culinary school was going to be my new dream, my future, but now I don’t know anymore. I want it to be, but I am getting more and more certain that I am not physically going to be able to do it.
Maybe, if I had waited a year I wouldn’t have ruined all the hard work I already did since the surgery, but I cannot go back. I have to choose based on where I am now, and in spite of the fact that actually I feel happy to chose myself and my health above any dream or career, I feel like such a failure.
I failed, yet again, in finding a place I can belong – a place to feel safe and heal my broken heart and soul from all the damage it has received these many years past and instead only added more pain and worry to my life.
How many failures does a person have to make before the result will change to success?
Why do people try to be emotionally supportive, when I hate that more than anything? I don’t want someone to tell me pretty lies or assumptions, I need facts and solutions however painful they might be.
Pretty lies and emotional support is nothing but trouble to me, because it means I have to go along with their neurotypical needs instead of focusing on what I need and right now, struggling with constant pain and sleepless nights as well as trying to accept that I might have made yet another stupid and pointless mistake is difficult enough.
It is not that I have no hope or possibilities in the future, it is not that I cannot find something new to strive for, it is not even the fear that I might never be rid of all this pain that makes me truly suffer these days – it is merely that I was foolish enough to believe that this place, culinary school, might be a place I could be accepted and work towards a new dream – that this could possibly be a new beginning of a great new path in life, a path that would make me feel fulfilled and happy.
I think, I was hoping for too much. I wanted it to be something it can never be. I wanted it to be where I found my healing through the pursuit of a new dream. All the time at culinary school my focus was on the future instead of my present, and so I failed to notice how my body was hurting more and more.
I thought I could ignore it and it would go away, because I was on the right path, but that’s not how things work. There is no right path, there’s only whatever path we take and it is up to us to turn it into the right path for us.
I don’t know how to not feel like a failure if I have to quit, and I still don’t really know if I have to or not. Right at this very moment, I fear my progress is not great enough and I doubt I will be able to return in 2 months and if I don’t, I won’t be able to continue at the school.
I feel very ambivalent about this; happy that I value myself and make choices that are good for me, but brokenhearted that this dream might have to stay like that – a dream, never to be lived. But you know what I feel the most? I feel ashamed because I continue to fail in everything that I do. It’s not that I worry about other people thinking I’m a failure, I am sure most people I know considers me a fool and failure as it is – I myself should not feel ashamed about this. Yet, I do. I hate that I do, but I do. I am not even entirely sure why I feel ashamed. How can so many opposing feelings even exist at the same time?
At moments like this I am so deeply grateful that I am not neurotypical, because neurotypicals are far more controlled by emotions than I am and honestly, I think I would be completely exhausted every day if I had been neurotypical.
They seem to feel and react, then think. I do things backwards. I think, react and then feel. The feeling part can take forever as well, so I am grateful it comes last. I have to make choices about my future very soon, but luckily all these feelings I don’t know what to do with, I can take my time and figure that out later.
Not matter what choices I make, I trust that everything will somehow work out.
Failures are unavoidable, annoying and frustrating at times, but unavoidable. Perhaps, this can be the last time I feel ashamed of making a mistake. It would be nice if it was.
In reality, we both know that I have already made my choice. I chose my health. I just don’t know what the results of my efforts now will be in the future – so, what I really don’t know is what the consequence of my choice will be.
I have failed myself many times before, because I did not value my health or protect myself when I should have. It is a mistake that I will not make again – or at least I thought so. It would seem I made the same mistake this time.
Perhaps it is the failure to protect myself and take care of my health that I am truly struggling with these days. I promised myself that I would protect myself, and in spite of that, I ended up damaging my shoulder again – years of hard work all lost because I prioritised doing what was expected of me and not what I needed to do.
I assumed school was more important and only now do I realise that it is not. What use is school or work if I am in too much pain to enjoy it? Or too damaged to even work? What use is it if I chase yet another dream to the point that it almost destroys me, like I did in the past?
At least right now, I am making the right choice for me.
