Failure

I saw a post on Instagram this afternoon about the story of Colonel Sanders. He basically failed at everything he tried his entire life. At age 65 he found himself contemplating suicide. He remembered the one thing he was good at was cooking, especially fried chicken. So he fried his chicken with his original recipe and started selling it. By age 88 he was a billionaire.

His story inspires me.

I’m from Kentucky. I was born and raised there and still live 20 miles away just across the border in Indiana. And I still have my southern accent and folks in my current city in Indiana have difficulty understanding me when I talk.” “Are you from Kentucky? Do you eat a lot of fried chicken?” I’ve probably been asked those questions a thousand times by people from other states. Most people seem to assume Kentuckians walk around barefoot eating fried chicken all day. Well I can’t lie. I don’t like shoes much and I do enjoy fried chicken.

I relate to the Colonel because I’ve felt like a failure a lot in this life. I have a strange Kentucky accent. I was never good at sports. I wasn’t in with the popular kids in school. In fact I was bullied in elementary and junior high school. I’ve had countless failed relationships and two failed marriages. I never found my work niche and changed jobs a lot over the last 20 years. I can keep adding to the list but you get the idea.

Today at work a coworker asked me if I had used the portable toilet at break. I told her I did and asked why she wanted to know. She said, “Well you left the lid up and you didn’t hit the toilet with the toilet paper.” I said, “Seriously?” And then she told me she wouldn’t have asked me otherwise. I felt like I was about an inch tall. Did I eat lunch and lose all of my faculties and forget how to go to the bathroom? It sent a horrible feeling of failure through to my core. I may as well have written ASHAMED across my forehead. If I can’t even properly hit the hole with the toilet paper…what CAN I do right?!??

And then I had to explain to two other coworkers how I got fired from a job I only worked at for four days this January. I wanted to go crawl in the portapot myself and close the lid.

Do you ever have these days? Weeks? Months? Years??? Everything you do just feels wrong? I’m hoping someone else can relate. I don’t think I’m alone. Shame, unworthy, guilt, strange, outcast, weird, weak, dumb, failure. Those are just a few words that come to mind when I’m not feeling good about myself. Those words are LIES.

I’m human. I screw up. But I’m a survivor. And tomorrow I will get up and do it all over again the best way I know how. I might hit the hole and I might not. But I’m not a failure. It’s NEVER too late to start over. I am a perfectly imperfect child of God. (And I’m actually proud of my Kentucky accent ☺️).

Blessings,

Stacey ~ iamalive