I failed my dental exam. Technically, I passed two of the four sections and failed the other two, which amounts to a failure and is actually exactly how I thought I did. Yay for self-knowledge!

I’d like to preface everything I’m about to say by acknowledging my privilege in that I am no longer a single female seeking to support myself. Hell, even when I was a single female seeking to support myself everywhere from Birmingham to Savannah to New York City, I knew I wasn’t in danger of being tossed out onto the streets. I’ve always had some version of a family to come home to. And presently, I have a husband whose work supports us, so the outcome of this test was not the difference between eating and not eating tonight.

(Interest rates are rising, however, which means the rent [mortgage] is about to be too damn high, which is what necessitated my taking the test in the first place. The pay for volunteer ethics teachers and canteen workers at the boys’ school is shockingly low (read: zero), and it’s time for me to supplement the income.)

The question, now, is…how? How to supplement said income, how to use my training or talents or passion, all of which might not converge in the same spot (again, what privilege to even be able to ponder this question!)? I think about the South American candidate I met during the exam who was taking it for the second time, who is a single mom who just brought her son across the ocean to live with her, who was a dentist in another country and, until she passes these tests, is an assistant here. I think about how GD lucky (fortunate, #blessed) I am, whichever way this goes.

This is now how I used to respond to failure.

Failure, at least however I used to define it, wrecked me. And not just because I landed in the middle of the pack on a dental practical or didn’t get into the college’s premiere sophomore social networking group. The worst thing about failure to me was its public nature, that people would find out I wasn’t the best, wasn’t chosen. This was so painful because I didn’t know my worth apart from recognition. Now, I watch as my kids are surrounded by markers of achievement and opportunities for awards and…I’m kind of glad they saw me biff this one. For me, and for them. For us, because it didn’t change the way they saw me one iota and because it provided AFGO* to recognise that life has a funny way of going on and we are so not in charge of it, or at the centre of it.

Yesterday I submitted an essay to another writing competition, six months after the ceremony where I failed to win an award after being shortlisted among the elderly women, one of whom had to lie down during the whole thing because of her blood pressure, and honestly, this one wasn’t all that great. The dental exam? I don’t know if we’ll sink more money into that venture or not (even though my friend told me there’s a way to write it off and I wish she hadn’t). I’m dealing simultaneously with being bummed that, in a way, I let The Husband down because passing would have taken some pressure off him, but at the same time, I wonder if maybe this is one of those moments in marriage when he has to face/grieve the space between how (who) things are and how (who) he’d like them to be? Finances aside–and I know they matter–maybe there’s a part of me that needs to make peace with occasionally being a disappointment.

It’s a little weird how okay I am with that, after a lifetime of running like hell from it. Feels a bit like…freedom.

*another fucking growth opportunity. I believe that phrase was coined by Glennon Doyle.