fatalistic failure

Insanity will officially begin in nineteen days. After today's shipment, I have every book (minus a pharmacology textbook, still waiting on that one) required for the approaching semester. I saved over $300 ordering these books from Amazon and, surprisingly, Walmart.com, so I'm feeling good about that. But that's about it. I immediately transform into an anxiety-ridden heap of flesh and nerves when I consider the next phase of my life. To say I have zero confidence in my abilities to succeed within the nursing program and the profession would be a glaring understatement. Never mind the physical act of achievement, I'm unable to conjure a mental image of me success stability (together). I simply don't see it and cannot comprehend it.

For example, consider my recent experience with the new job (pizza delivery guy). Essentially, my two responsibilities are delivering food and dish washing. Simple, right? Well, I felt quite overwhelmed after my first few days. The act of integrating oneself into a preconfigured system is challenging. The mechanical aspects of the job didn't pose a problem; it was the order, the systemization of the tasks that proved difficult to grasp and remember.

I'm constantly battling myself. On one hand, I feel as though I have shorted myself in spending my twenties accomplishing very little. I'm a smart, competent person who should dedicate myself to something meaningful and important, I've told myself countless times. Contrarily, I've destroyed myself emotionally with unrealistic expectations and destructive conclusions about who I am and my capabilities, both proven and potential. When I write of unrealistic expectations, I'm speaking about the initial challenges of my new job. I now realize that an unrealistic and absurd belief that I, somehow, should have known the order and systemization of my duties while simultaneously knowing nothing about said systemization and duties led to those feelings of ineptitude. Ridiculous, I know, but when the typical anxieties of a new job are coupled with the realization of working among high school kids and young twentysomethings, well, things can get overwhelming very quickly, especially when you're a socially awkward person like myself.

The paradox of creating, usually unconsciously, unrealistic expectations is that they aren't based on a genuine understanding of the situation, which renders achievement of those expectations practically impossible. I now realize I possess a fatalistic view of failure and success, which is why I have difficulty envisioning my success in school and nursing (and virtually everything else, for that matter). Fatalism eliminates the independent variable from the circumstance or challenge, leaving previous successes moot. I cling to flawed logic: even though I initially thought my eventual successes would be failures, I "know" I'll fail this time because that's my default position and not every attempt is successful (essentially it is this: there's never been a better time to fail than this time).

See, the fucked up thing about all this is that I realize on every level my logic is unreasonable, even irrational. Yet its skeleton remains, pulverizing my confidence into oblivion, leaving me a self-rejected, zero self-esteem mess.

xx