What does failure feel like?

If failure had a face he would be a man. Perhaps short and fat, or tall and lanky. Perhaps his skin would be pearly white or mud brown. If failure had a face I would recognize him in a line up no matter how he looked that day.

I met failure on the second day of primary school, the day I brought back that English test. Changed a 3 into a 5 and hoped nobody would notice. They did of course. I didn't have the smarts back then to use the same color pen.

I met failure at the gasoline station when I was 16, carrying five boxes of cereal, four candy bars, three packets of milk, two packs of cigarettes, and one pregnancy test.

I met failure when he was a short man with black hair and puffy face, he wore the same green t-shirt every day with a self-made jackson pollock painting of ketchup and mustard on the front. When he lived in a run-down apartment clothes and papers and matches and lighters skittered around the floor. A mattress on the ground, no sheets, no pillows. I ate pizza with him and got high on what was supposed to be weed but barely made the effort. We sat on the sofa so long the outline of my back is still imprinted on it like the signature I never intended to leave. We drank cheap whiskey and smoked cigarettes and talked about living the high life and laughed at the sheep that went to school to chase careers. Couldn’t they see how happy we were rotting on that couch?

I met failure when he was beautifully alluring, his voice husky and soft, his eyes bright and glowing. All dilated pupils and runny nose. We spent years together in club bathrooms. White-hot power shot straight up the nose. Coursed through our veins and made us wonder. Is this what it felt like to be a god? He told me how easy it is to take, to lie, to steal. That if they left it in the open they deserved to be taught a lesson. We would be that lesson. And we were. Until we weren’t.

I saw failure everywhere I went since I was a little girl. I saw him in my promises, in my mother's tears, in my father's rage, in my desires and my ambitions. I saw him at that hospital.

When I broke up with failure he raged for hours, made me sob until the tears felt painful against my swollen cheeks, until the gasps I made were not for air but for release - release from him. He held me by the hair, tight grip in my golden locks pulling me up and slamming me into the wall again and again and again.

If failure had a face he would no doubt be a man. Golden curls and swollen face, brittle bones, and sunken eyes. His face would look like mine.