Dear Failure,
I can’t stop crying. For the past three months. First, I was laid off from my job. Then I found out I have an immune disorder that’s been impacting my health for a long time, but it took forever to get a diagnosis. There’s been relief in knowing what’s been wrong and how to take better care of myself, but I’m also grieving all the years I thought I was a hypochondriac or was told by others that I was probably fine.
And then lastly, my boyfriend broke up with me out of nowhere—at least that’s how it’s felt to me. I thought we were doing fine for two people who have been together for most of their twenties. It turns out my idea of "fine" was him being secretly unhappy for years and hoping it would eventually "get better" without talking to me about it or even being able to tell me exactly what was wrong or unfulfilling about me or our relationship. He says he loves me but isn’t in love with me. It all feels so cliché and I’m so embarrassed to be approaching 30 and feeling like such a loser.
My friends used to come to me for guidance and advice because I seemed to be the one who had it "figured out." Good job. Sweet boyfriend. Great apartment in a major city. Financially secure. A decent enough relationship with my parents and siblings. I feel like they’re looking at me now and thinking exactly what I think about myself: "You know nothing. You are nothing."
I’ve never felt this lost in my life and I can’t stop asking myself, "Who am I?" and the only response I hear back from myself is "I don’t know.“ It’s terrifying. I’m not sleeping. My parents are far from wealthy so I don’t really have help. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t find a job. I’m reading stories about it taking 6 months or more for some people to find a job right now and it makes me feel sick.
Failure, how do I get through this without losing my mind? I can’t imagine an end to what I’m experiencing right now and I feel trapped. I’m drinking too much cheap wine and I’m on the apps talking to guys I have no interest in just because the brief attention makes me feel something and distracts me from obsessively watching the news and then I feel awful and tell myself I’m a terrible person. What do I do?
Nobody
Dear Nobody,
I’d like to start out by asking you to kindly bear with me. I’m uncertain what your relationship with poetry is, so in light of the circumstances, it might be really fucking annoying for me to ask "Do you read poetry, bro?"
But I ask because your letter immediately made me think of a poem I have loved with my whole heart since I was a teenager. Being an angsty weirdo teenager prone to solitude and losing myself in books, I of course, loved Emily Dickinson.
Here’s the poem:
I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Nobody, first I want to say that I see you. Not to sound incredibly dramatic, but your life—as THEY say, you know THEM—is "falling apart.“ Many of the things that once gave you a sense of stability and a sense of self have fallen away and you don’t know what’s going to take their place yet, and perhaps, you’re also fearing that nothing will come to hold you, to help create who you are with you, and that is what this empty feeling is. This feeling of being nobody. This feeling of being nothing.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ask a Failure to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.