Failing is not something I really do.

In fact, there are only a handful of times where I can really say that I have failed at something in my life.

I was a great child.

I didn’t whine or make many messes.

My mother often tells me that she doesn’t know what she would’ve done had I not been born and that I am the perfect child.

I excel in everything that I do—

Like literally.

I have attended not one, but two top ranking institutions of higher education.

My GPA kicks your GPA’s ass.

Speaking of asses, I have a very nice one.

I am in a monogamous relationship with a handsome and driven black man.

And when you’re a black woman in America, let me tell you—that is not failure.

That is success, my friends.

I lead and people listen because they know I do not fail.

I have lots of friends, who often tell me about how much I do not fail.

They remark on how perfect I am.

The way I look.

Speak.

Talk.

Down to the way I organize my pocket book planner in which I sort the events and tasks in my life at which I do not fail.

But I will say that the most defining moment in my life is when I made the biggest failure to date—

I failed to end my own life.

It was December of 2012.

Yours truly gathered and consumed lethal concoction, deciding it was time I spare the world my existence.

It would be a seamless venture.

My roommate would find me, call the ER and I’d be on my way out this bitch we call reality.

Well, I was wrong.

I was awoken to an IV in my arm and a clipboard hovering over my head.

I raged at nurses and doctors for saving my life.

Hippocratic oath my ass!

I was trying to commit suicide here and these professionals on their high horses caused me to fail.

Afterwards I was committed to a psychiatric ward, legally obliged by a 48 hour hold.

The first words I said when released from restraints was that—

“Things like this don’t happen to people like me”

You know people who don’t fail.

During this time I was neighbors with real failures.

Like the schizophrenic mother on the verge of losing custody of her kids,

Or the bipolar drug addict,

The type of people that always fucking losing in monopoly,

Sure they were failures, but I still needed people to play board games with in the rec room.

Yet after what felt like the longest week of my life,

I was eventually released.

And before you know it,

I was back on my shit.

Not failing at everything— and boy, was I relieved.

I vowed to move beyond this failure and get back to what I did best

Not failing.

And this brings me back to where I am now.

So to be straight with you—

I’m not going to give you some sappy-ass concluding remark as to how I realized that it is okay to fail.

I continue to avoid failure like the plague,

Even just thinking about makes me itch.

Yet every once in a while, when I reflect on my second chance at life

I wonder:

If failing means living, then what is success?