on failure

i mentioned cynthia in my last entry…she’s a hometown girl i dated from the summer or fall of 1994 until late 1995. this started after i graduated from a&m in may 1994 with no job and ended up living with my parents doing part-time menial labor dead-end jobs…my life was headed for great things — a rocket scientist doing carpet cleaning and janitorial work. we got engaged in june of 1995. i called everything off in september or so of 1995 because it was pretty obvious (to me) that it was all going to end poorly, and quickly. unfortunately, in late 1996 i went back to sort of seeing her from time to time (i didn’t want to date, but i kept visiting her). anyway…she’s gone through a lot of stuff in the last 10 years regarding relationships, marriage(s), etc. (i get to find out these things when i come home.) i would like to say it shows my wisdom in that area — figuring out to get out and wait (even if my actions didn’t show strength of resolve at all times) — but these days i can’t say my next choice ended up working out much better. i bet cynthia and i wouldn’t have lasted two years though…maybe not even one.
and i’m clamoring to get myself into another relationship? i don’t think anyone i know would call me a dreamer, or even an optimist, but i do think i’m a bit of an idealist and somewhere inside of me is the belief that i can have a wonderful, loving, committed lifetime with someone. i’m too much of a realist (or pessimist) to believe in the fairy tale version, but i really don’t want to give up on the hope that there is something wonderful out there for me in regards to relationships. what happened with tamara stings horribly, both for the ways i feel i failed (whether small or large, short-term or long) and for what she did to me and has put me through, but i don’t want that failure to scare me from being able to acheive the goals i would still like to believe are available to me in my life.
and while we’re on the topic of failure, i’d like to state the obvious: my domain name has the word “failure” in it, as does my blog. i get asked often why i would choose such a negative word to represent myself. first off, people need to nurture a better appreciation for sarcasm, irony, absurdism, and other forms of humour. these things are wonderful. and secondly, i’m completely and utterly petrified of failure. (bet some of you saw that one coming.) what better way to try and weaken what you are scared of than to embrace it, to champion it, to wear it? it’s the defense mechanism of a perfectionist. (and a questionable psychiatric methodology for trying to overcome phobias.) if you embrace failure, the only way to go is up. but it’s more a mental parlour trick than any functional way of appropriately dealing with life.
and since i recently mentioned it’s a wonderful life… clarence, angel second class, wrote in his book: “remember george: no man is a failure who has friends.” (inspiring, ain’t it?)