Is Trying Really That Embarrassing?

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Happy September! It’s finally here, and the lazy sweetness of summer is long gone. I used to dread September as a kid, but also found it thrilling. Like waiting in line for a rollercoaster - the whole time you’re wondering why time is moving so slow, if you should just get out of line and walk away, watching the next groups of people ahead of you go up and up, all that thinking and wondering until it’s finally your turn, and now you’re just waiting for the drop. That’s September. It’s a new beginning, it’s the waiting in line part, it’s the building blocks to new relationships, places, experiences, jobs, and opportunities. You know what September holds, to some degree, but you’re not quite sure what comes after that. 

September is also the month of trying. I have a love/hate relationship with that too (are we noticing a pattern here? Indecisiveness, maybe?) I used to have what I call “trying is embarrassing syndrome” where even the most mundane tasks that required me to be publicly seen were viewed as lame and humiliating by literally no one other than me, so I refused to do them. This went on for years. Refreshing my inbox while waiting for my coffee shop order instead of putting my phone down and looking at the floor or talking to the person next to me. Refraining from answering my professor’s questions in class even though nobody else was saying anything and I felt bad. Telling people about a far-out ambitious goal that I had, even if it was up in the air and I might not even want it in the future, but I didn’t want people to see me fail. 

And the strange part about all of this, is that this mindset only applied to me and my actions. When I saw other people trying and publicly going for the things that they wanted, I admired them. I wanted to be them. Suddenly it didn’t feel all that lame to be loud about what I loved and wanted to do, instead it felt terribly shameful to be sitting on the bench the whole game, not getting any minutes. When I see people online with strong opinions, or sharing their writing, or expressing their goals and dreams, I don’t cringe. I ache to be like them, on the other side of a mountain that I can’t see beyond. They have managed to push through the very feeling I seem to be haunted by, and that feels worse than my carefully curated aimless internal desires that I’ve expressed to nobody but myself. I’ve talked myself down from so many adventures, conversations, and new experiences, and that negative self talk became my worldview. My inner life was plagued by fear and an exasperating back and forth of should I do something even though I’m terrified of putting myself out there, or should I keep it to myself so that I don’t have to reckon with falling short? 

One time I was talking to someone and told them that one of my biggest fears was not meeting the love of my life organically. They laughed and quietly and said “oh okay” and I suddenly felt like that was the dumbest thing in the world to say, even though it wasn't, and so many people feel that way. But in the moment, I felt criminally uncool and desperate, like maybe everyone else who had met their partners was speaking a secret language that was unknown to me, undiscovered and untouched by my uncoolness, and by speaking those words aloud, I had ruptured some void that existed between my world and theirs. We convince ourselves that being loved requires this effortlessness, this “being chased” mentality, and it’s actually mostly luck and timing. But we ignore that in favor of grander stories, and we look down on those who try and come up short. Why do we do that? Why are there people out there who make others feel bad about themselves, as if we don’t already do it to ourselves enough?

I think this is especially prevalent among young women. We never tell men to stop chasing their goals, to stop posting their accomplishments on LinkedIn, to not be loud and proud about their opinions. But we teach women to quiet ourselves because failure isn’t an option for us. We’re not allowed to be wrong about things, or make mistakes, or fail in our careers. Otherwise it’s considered a character flaw rather than just an objective truth of all of our lives - nothing is permanent and we will all inevitably mess up, even if we’ve tried our hardest. Sometimes you can really want a relationship to work out and do everything in your power to make it so, but it just doesn’t. Maybe you don’t get a job that you knew you were overqualified for. Or perhaps you’ve worked incredibly hard for an opportunity that someone who’s been mean to you got instead. These are unavoidable moments that befall all of us, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. 

Everything is lame. Everything is embarrassing. Everything is dumb and unimportant. Everything is uncool. Everything is mortifying and humiliating. Do you see how ridiculous this sounds? You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. As a culture, we’re obsessed with breakout stars and overnight successes, of luck and paths aligning, of a highway to fame and glory. The work is not glamorous, it’s far from it. Trying isn’t “cool” so we don’t want to talk about it. We just want to share the end result on social media to prove that we’re worth something too. But what if we were all a little honest about what it took to get that internship, that job, that relationship? What if we just dropped the facades and existed in our entirety without fear of embarrassment and make-believe guilt about things we didn’t even do wrong? 

I wish a world like that existed, but for now, I’ll just have to try and create it for myself.