Week 3
rachel faces the odyssey
Last week, I promised that I would dive into some of my epic failures. I think there’s no better place to begin than with Homer’s The Odyssey.
It was 2004. I had just moved that summer, right before starting high school, coming from an overall lackluster junior high, and I’d heard that my new school was nationally ranked for academics. I was so excited. A move felt like a do-over, a fresh start where I could make a name for myself and not just be known as the quiet kid. I could surround myself with friends and classmates who also loved learning. I did not realize what I was about to face when I entered as a freshman.
It was— and I fully believe it still is— a hyper-competitive, merciless machine of a school, that seemed to pit students against one another in its insatiable quest to uphold its “reputation” (it was somehow always talking about its reputation). I wasn’t far from also realizing how unprepared I was— academically, mentally, emotionally, socially— for any of it. I can feel ill just thinking about the toxicity of the place, how it systematically eroded my self-worth that I’ve had to consciously work on repairing in the years since. It started with The Odyssey.
I have always loved reading, but The Odyssey made my head hurt. From page one, I was slogging through it like no other book, trying to track characters, infer meaning, extract themes, and understand WTF was happening on any given page in relation to the story as a whole. One Sunday afternoon I was reading on the back porch, on one of those probably-one-of-your-last-chances-to-see-sunlight kind of days, Homer in my lap, flipping pages to estimate the time it would take me to finish the reading assignment. I finally took a breath and started reading when one of my aunts called, crying hysterically that my grandfather died from a heart attack. She asked me to put my father on the phone, but he was out of the house, so I gave my condolences and hung up. Shaking, my heart sunk to the pit of my stomach with the knowledge that I would have to be the one to tell my dad that his dad passed away. My book was still open, and my tears blurred the words as I tried to think of what words I would tell my dad.
There would be no more reading that day. When my parents asked if I’d finished my homework later that night, after everything settled down, I said I had. I mean, technically my eyes did continue to read the pages, it’s just that my brain didn’t process any of it. They asked if I was okay, and I said yes. I was sad, but fine. The next day I would catch up, I told myself, though I did not. Every time I opened the book my mind would kind of black out, and even as my eyes would scan over the words, I couldn’t retain any of it. Needless to say, I failed the test, which involved matching the characters to their quotes. I didn’t just fail, I badly failed.
While in a merciful world it could have just sunk down to the bottom of my backpack, where months later I’d find it crinkled and torn and I’d further rip it up, throw it away, and forget about it, this was my high school. It was paraded out at parent-teacher conferences later that semester. My teacher told my parents that I could have done better on his test if “she had taken it with her eyes closed.” Dead serious.
I remember my parents coming home that night. I remember them looking vaguely traumatized. I don’t remember how I found out about what he had said, of who told me, or of anything said to console me. I do remember the look of my parents’ haunted faces, and of feeling like I was the ghost. It felt like they were looking right through me. Like I was standing in front of them, waving my hands and begging for them to see me, and feeling like it was useless. I was drowning and being pulled farther and farther away from them. I remember thinking that they must feel like they lost the daughter they thought they had. I didn’t just fail the test. I was the failure. It broke me.
* * * * *
Since my experience reading and failing The Odyssey almost twenty years ago, I’ve found myself:
Not liking mythology
Not liking poetry
Not liking fantasy
Not liking stories with too many characters
Not liking stories written a very long time ago
Crying about The Odyssey on New Year’s Eve (2023) to my friend (who happened to be in that class and got 100% on that test… and who still adamantly maintains that she did not get a THING out of reading The Odyssey)
Tentatively loving Madeline Miller’s Circe and then mysteriously abandoning the book when Odysseus shows up
Becoming borderline obsessed with doing whatever I could to avoid looking stupid
As someone who always wanted to be a writer, went on to major in English, worked in publishing, got an English/ LA teaching endorsement, and became a teacher… none of these are… great, though I’m pretty sure it’s the last one on the list that has held me back the most. There is nothing I’ve loathed more than looking stupid. Every time I have failed in front of others, it’s like it’s been permanently etched into my brain. The time when my family played the game “…I Should Have Known That!” and I froze on the question “what country gave the statue of liberty to the U.S.?” The time a classmate in high school looked over to me and, as a joke, asked me what was the country he was pointing to, and after I said I don’t know… laughed and said he assumed everyone knew Madagascar. The time I was playing another trivia game with my family and couldn’t name a South American country under time pressure. (Come to think of it, a disproportionate number of cases of me looking/ feeling stupid revolve around my lack of geographical knowledge or awareness).
The fear of looking stupid has blocked me in so many ways, paralyzing me from sharing my writing, my ideas, my opinions, my guesses, my dreams, my hopes, my interests, my goals, my hobbies, my dislikes, my angers, my heartbreaks, my wins, my authentic self. It has been a boulder of a roadblock, bringing me to a screeching halt when I am moving anywhere towards reaching for something that is not guaranteed or forming a deeper connection. In consciously or subconsciously trying to protect myself, I have made myself small, invisible, and trapped in dysfunctional cage of inaction. Now, I think about the Annis Nin quote: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” I think that day for me has finally arrived.
* * * * *
On Christmas day this year, my mom gave me old home movies that she and my dad taped of me growing up, now on a beautifully convenient and safe hard-drive. If I am being totally honest, I was grateful to have them but really nervous to watch them. I was scared of being embarrassed or even ashamed of my younger self. I was scared of feeling stuck (oh, I always seem to be feeling stuck), of feeling like nothing in my life has been remarkable or noteworthy or even the least bit interesting. I was scared that they would be boring. I was scared that I would be boring. I was scared that they would be depressing, and that I would just be reminded of how much time has passed and how far away I am from where I want to go.
But I watched myself in various ages, through happy birthdays, Christmases, vacations, performances… there were all those occasions from my memories, and there I was. And I was all at once back in those moments reliving them, and watching this lovely little girl from afar. I watched this girl and felt the magnitude of my growth and the length of my journey. I watched her in wonder. It was so joyful. I felt and still feel incredibly protective of her, as a parent would their child.
When my mom gave them to me she said “I think you need to spend some time with you.” I feel overwhelmingly lucky that I have these moments captured and close to me. Maybe the best part about them was seeing how loved I was, and thinking about how loved I am, that my parents would go through all of the effort to bring out the camcorder, remember to buy and load the tapes, go through painstaking efforts not to record over the VHS tapes and then all my mom’s work to make sure they were preserved from VHS to DVD, and then from DVD to hard-drive. It was the best gift I have ever received. I know how much effort she went through to give them to me this year, and I can’t even fathom how much effort went into actually making them over the whole course of my childhood. To see my parents enjoying me, loving me as I am, and not for any accomplishment… I just kept thinking… look at how loved that girl is. Of course. She is lovable. I love her too.
* * * * *
I have had many, many moments that have broken me. I have probably had too many of these moments to count. But I will continue to bring to light the ones that really haunt me, because I owe it to myself. Now that I have started the journey of reconnecting with myself, I realize I owe it to my fourteen-year-old self to see her and to acknowledge her wounds, and to also do the work to help her heal them. Which brings me to my work this week:
rachel faces the odyssey (again)
I downloaded The Odyssey from the library. I have not yet started the actual book, but I am going to start this week. I’d like to think that on my own hero’s journey, I’ve heard the call to adventure and am about to embark on my own odyssey. Downloading the book might seem like the smallest of steps, but given how far I have run from the book for twenty years, it’s a huge first step for me.
rachel faces a map (fail of the week)
There is nothing that embarrasses me quite as much as my lack of geographical knowledge. I started with a U.S. map, which earned me an 81% (technically not failing, but still really really embarrassing that I blanked out on Iowa, where my dad’s side of the family lives and I’ve visited many times, and totally forgot about Connecticut where I was born. Not to mention some other embarrassing mislabels). Then I faced the world map, which earned me 15/195 countries —> 7.6%, solidly counting as an epic fail).
Not completely atrocious but still pretty embarrassing
I can only go up from here…
bonus fail
I take a spin class at the gym every Monday night. I have been coming for the past few weeks. This week, someone eagerly ran over to me asking if I needed help as I tried to adjust my bike. “No, just adjusting my bike.” Then the whole knob came off the bike in my hand, and the helpful lady laughed and said “well that’s not how you do it.” I turned red with embarrassment and annoyance, as she bent over to screw back in the knob and showed me how it pulls as a spring. “Thank you, I’ve never had problems in the past!” I said as she smiled politely and walked away. I don’t know why I got defensive and embarrassed, but I think it’s reflective of my default state, and having this mini fail and someone who was kind enough to help me gave me some useful information for the next time at the gym. Bonus!
Thank you all for the support and I will update you with my latest fails next Saturday at 10 a.m. CT.
Until then, happy failing!
Rachel