I Failed That's Okay

If you don’t get an A then you’re lazy, you could have studied harder, you could stayed up another hour just to cram the papers into your hair. I see boys with earthquake hands from the four cups of coffee they chugged just to stay awake that morning. I see the teachers who value good marks above their student’s mental health picture. I see Failure tattooed on my forehead and everyone seems to have one too. You father sits you down again and he laughs when you tell him that your anxiety is flaring up, again. He laughs and it’s sounds like your shaking fists holding a pen. He says Lazy but I hear the frustrated sighs in the exam room, I hear the girls crying afterwards not for themselves but because they are afraid of how angry their parents will get. And eventually they understand that learning just means passing the next exam and we are programming their minds only for the next test so we end up with a class of people who know the answer but don’t even know themselves yet. I mean when was the last time somebody told me it was okay to not pass that test? It was okay to learn what it is like to live before my head is once again drowning in everything I need to know but I can’t. I failed a test last week and when I got my results back I laughed. Not because it was inherently funny but because I remembered that I could fail too. I laughed with the sound of the trees whispering and the children playing in the park. I heard my five year old self with painted hands sing happy songs. I heard all that made me human and it reminded me that no test could me any less of what I am.