Screwing Up Royally

And living to tell the tale

Allow me to save you a solid forty to fifty years of being certain that all mistakes are BAD and to be avoided at any and all costs. I’m not talking “learning experiences” here; I’m talking mistakes that are ugly, messy, stupid, wasteful, confusing and counterproductive.

We all can wrap our heads around the idea of a mistake being an opportunity to learn something and do better next time.

I had this friend

I guess I had a bit of a crush on her and was so surprised when she wanted to hang out with me. Every time she called I was amazed all over again. She was funny and whip-smart and sleekly beautiful in that butch kind of way I can’t resist. I remember one night when her transit card didn’t work in the turnstile at the Times Square subway station. We had to get in line to get it sorted out and found ourselves at the end of an enormously long line of kids from Iowa or something and every single one of those kids was refilling their transit card individually. It was late and she even told me to go on, that I didn’t have to wait for her.

Yeah, right.

It took the better part of 45 minutes and was so much fun. We laughed and joked and made wild assumptions about the destinations of our fellow subway station companions. We bonded.

We also bonded the night when she reunited with a former partner who just happened to be in the same diner that we were in. It was Christmas time and the place was strung with lights and then here comes this witchy looking woman with warm eyes and an expression of astonishment.

When it all went south I didn’t know what to do. It had all been around an email from her that somehow didn’t hit my inbox asking for help, emotional help. While she was waiting for that help, that I was blissfully unaware she needed, I sent a silly email about something ridiculous. I compounded the pain I caused her by sharing about my mistake with other friends, thinking that if I kept the name of the friend to myself it would be ok. I did this with her in the room.

She’s never spoken to me again.

In fact, she also stopped speaking to my partner at the time with whom she’d been friends with as well. If I’d see her in the street she’d avoid me. If she was with her partner, the one from that Christmas dinner, her partner would be friendly but she’d pretend I wasn’t there.

I went through agonies for years after that. I prayed about it. I talked to friends and mentors about it. I journaled about it. I tried every possible approach to her and was rebuffed every time. I quite literally went around for six months feeling sick to my stomach. How could I have been so stupid!?

If you haven’t yet pulled one of these, you will

We all do. And this was far from the only boneheaded thing I’ve ever done; it’s not even the most boneheaded thing. But it’s just one example of putting my foot wrong and then mashing down on it as hard as possible to make it worse.

But here’s what I finally got through my head: Doing wrong, stupid, short-sighted, even selfish things that result in messes won’t annihilate me. And, somewhere in the deepest, most well-guarded recesses of my soul, lingered the absolute certainty that stepping wrong, even once, would result in my annihilation. Did I think I’d disappear in a whiff of smoke? Maybe.

But so far that hasn’t happened

I bet it hasn’t happened to you or anyone you know either, right? All this is to say something that you already know.

We know this with our heads. We know we’re gonna screw up royally and even do terrible damage in the lives of people we love. We know we’re going to let people down. We know we’re not going to protect the ones who are counting on us. We’re going to shoplift and lie and cheat on our taxes and our significant others. Maybe we think we won’t or hope we won’t, but we’re going to make some really big messes.

Here’s the thing which we know with our heads but need to learn in our hearts.

We have the outrageously ridiculously magnificent opportunity to be alchemists in our own lives. If we’re ready to stop pretending we’ve got it all together and honestly ‘fess up to the shit we’ve done, we have the sublime opportunity to turn that shit into gold. A big part of that requires us to quit making shit, or to at least make new kinds of shit, but stopping the shit-making is always a good move. It can be done.

Who can you help by being honest about the messes you’ve made? There are people in our everyday lives who carry misconceptions about us that it’s a lot easier to allow. Be braver than that. Be honest.

We can’t change the past

There’s a woman whose life has been made exponentially worse by foolish, selfish, fear-driven things I stood by and allowed when we were young. I didn’t protect her and it was partly my responsibility to do just that. I’ll never repair that relationship. That strong, capable, intelligent woman who daily makes an exceptionally positive impact in the lives of others like herself and me, she’s done with me and with good reason.

What I can do and have done is first: stop making shit. And second: exposed myself and those decades of my messes to assure other survivors that their messes ain’t all that and then show them how to put that shit to good use.

We’ve all got big messes, big mistakes, big screw-ups. That’s what humans do; we screw up. And then, if we’re lucky, we learn that being wrong and doing stupid shit doesn’t kill us and then we learn (slowly sometimes) that all that damage and wreckage and misery can be put to use.

What good can you do with your messes today? ❤

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