Failure by Karla Rivas
FAILURE-SUCCESS…The students were challenged to consider the interaction of these two fundamental realities of life.
KARLA…grabs our attention with her opening line, before acknowledging mistakes she regrets but refuses to be taken down by.
Failure
I’m one failure away from ruining my life. I mean, I’m about to start doing crack and live on the lonely, dirty streets of Baltimore. I’ll be honest, I don’t know where to start. I thought about it yesterday for a very, very long time and I still don’t really know how to articulate how I feel. I feel like I’m being held hostage by this invisible force that has deprived me from oxygen and is causing me to roll around as if I’m a roach on its back trying to get back on its feet.
I’m kind of still trying to figure out how to say something, without saying anything at all. It’s actually the most difficult thing to do. I’ve been trying to not make my past mistakes happen again. I’m trying really hard to be able to live with them, but there is nothing more difficult than forgiving yourself for past mistakes. It’s even harder to do that if you didn’t hurt just one person, but many.
Now I feel like I’m actively hurting the people around me. It’s a crazy, almost unreal experience to be scared of yourself and your actions. I’m trying really hard to be careful with my words telling you this. I don’t want people to read or hear this story and have pity, I just want people to understand what I’m trying to say.
I’m trying really hard to not deprive my feelings from the daylight, but everytime I bring them up it feels like someone gets hurt by what I feel. Then it brings me to question myself and whether it’s right for me to feel something. There’s times I ask the question out loud and people give me a mixed response, telling me that I “should” feel that; others tell me it’s unjustified how I feel. But I always feel that what I’m feeling is never right and I should just not feel so much. So what should I do if I feel too much but I don’t want to feel as much? Should I just stop feeling? Do I continue to feel and hurt people? Or should I just kill myself? (Guys, it’s a joke. I’m not going to harm myself.)
It’s hard being a failure and then trying to live with that, while also trying to succeed in the field you failed in. I’ve become one of those failures that don’t want to continue to try because they have nothing else.
On a lighter note, I talked about it last night to someone really important to me. I feel so much better after talking to them. I don’t feel like an upside down roach anymore, just a roach on its feet. This person has made me feel not so much as a failure, telling me it’s okay for me to feel everything and anything.
I also want to clarify that I refuse to be taken down by mistakes I make. My purpose is bigger than me and I am not losing the plot. I want my parents, mentors, and teachers to be proud of everything I do. Unfortunately, in order to be the best me, I have to make mistakes and sometimes they are big. I am not giving up or giving in to the failures, I refuse to.
I will succeed, not just for me, but for everyone that has been and will be with me on this beautiful journey of failures and success. All in all, I regret all my mistakes and failures, but I will not let them take me down to a deep hole that kills me. I will succeed and do whatever it takes to succeed.
Karla Rivas
October 3, 2025