Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

by Alexandra Potter

Because feeling like a fuck up isn’t about being a failure, it’s about being made to feel like one. It’s the pressure and the panic to tick all the boxes and reach all the goals . . . and what happens when you don’t. When you find yourself on the outside. Because on some level, in some aspect of your life, it’s so easy to feel like you’re failing when everyone around you appears to be succeeding.

“But that’s one of the good things about getting older: often the most terrible of things turn into the most amusing through the lens of time.”

It’s like there’s this new competition to see who can be the busiest. “How are you?” “Crazy busy!” “Me too! Absolutely manic!” Conversations are spent comparing hectic schedules and reeling off endless to-do lists, but mostly we just text because, seriously, who has time for an actual conversation? What I want to know is, when did busy become better? When did a jam-packed diary become a measure of success? And does that mean I’m failing because, since losing everything, I’m currently not that rushed off my feet,

If getting older has taught me one thing, it’s that I feel so many conflicting things about so many different things, and to negate or stifle any of them doesn’t make them go away. Emotions don’t necessarily have a moral compass. Feelings can’t be shamed into disappearing. Suppressing and ignoring them will only make them come back to bite you in the therapist’s chair.

See, that’s why I get annoyed. We’re encouraged to be our true, authentic selves, but being told to feel happy when you’re just not feeling it only encourages us to be the exact opposite. Life can be wonderful but it can also be scary and hard. We should be free to feel sad or gloomy or just downright bloody miserable, without feeling like there’s something wrong with us. Because sometimes happiness isn’t a choice. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t find joy. Which is why I’ve decided to stop beating myself up by desperately seeking happiness and give myself the permission to feel exactly how I feel, when I feel it. In fact, maybe, it’s not happiness we should be looking for after all—but acceptance.

Are we meant to believe a woman’s life only has value by being a mother or looking hot in a bikini? (Or the pièce de résistance: giving birth and bouncing back into a bikini weeks later.) What about having a job you love or fighting for a cause or pursuing your passion? Or how about just living your life and loving your body any way you damn well want, and not having to prove anything to anyone? Is that it? Just two choices: a bikini body or a baby.

“I’m eighty-one years old and I’ve learned if there’s one gift you can give yourself in life, it’s the freedom and courage to say ‘I don’t know.’ Because I’ll let you into a secret—you don’t have to know. You don’t have to know how you feel, or what you want, or if you’re happy or if you’re sad. Life is full of choices and decisions, and there is so much pressure on us to make all the right ones. But what if we don’t? What if we have doubts and misgivings? What if we make mistakes and contradict ourselves?”

Most people are good; it’s just that it’s the bad people who make the news.

Don’t worry too much about people liking you; liking yourself is far more important.