My Failure Definition Essay

Someone asks me, “What is your definition of failure?” And I think to myself, everything you don’t do right or don’t follow through with. I think and think not exactly knowing what to actually say to this question with a thousand answers, a question with a thousand questions questioning in itself. Maybe you ask yourself, what is success, is it happiness, money, food, a big house, a job, a family? Isn’t failure just the opposite of success, so is it sadness, being broke, starving, homeless, unemployed, single and unloved. Maybe your failure is another man's success, but my failure is no man's success, just another man's nightmare.

Middle school, 6th grade, scared, not knowing the other kids, not wanting to be hated, but I wanted friends.

Days go by I meet new people, laugh new laughs and speak more words, but I do not cry more tears, yet. Volleyball, my place of purity, joy and escape from the stress and real world. There I meet more people, more faces, more laughs, and more lies. A crush, what was a crush in middle school, someone you thought was cute, but never wanted to admit it, someone you talked to every day and held it in like some contagious cough being love you didn’t want to spread. So you do not cough and they do not know, this was a failure. For you know you and this guy will not be what your 6th grade self thought it would be, so you wait. But now there is another contagious sickness that nobody ever wants to catch, hatred and bullies. 7th grade, Pod I, alone, this was my second failure, were I continued to fail for the rest of middle school. Here I did not laugh new laughs I did not see new faces, I only heard new words, but really were the same words just spoken by different people. I cried new tears and I walked new walks so I wasn't seen, so I wasn’t yelled at, and I wasn't heard.
8th grade, Pod B, happy, for here I was ready to get out of middle school, graduation, my last few and final steps in that hell called Pueblo the last words I remember hearing walking away.

“You never deserved to graduate middle school, you won't last in high school.” This was a success, maybe the words spoken weren't, but it gave me hope to prove them wrong (The person who spoke these words had a 1.3 GPA and are not enrolled in high school to this day).

High School, 11th grade, happy, I am a junior and I am living my best life. I am playing the sport i’ve dedicated my life to, doing good in school like i’ve always wanted to, and i’m the happiest i’ve ever been. Life is simply you’re happy or you’re sad, or you pass or you fail, there’s no grey area. simply just life, being life, and you are you. But you are human, and you will fail, but you will pass, and you’re not the only one.

I go back to the school that gave me the biggest mental struggle for 3 years of my life, I go up to my favorite 6th grade teacher and we are just simply talking about life and what’s been going on in my highschool, and he says to me, “ Ashley, how are you really doing?” I had to think about this question longer than it took for me to answer it, “ Highschool is okay, lost a lot of friends and made some new ones” and he said without even hesitating, “ I know you will be successful and happy, keep pushin, God is with

you.”
In that moment, I shed a tear, I gave him a hug, and I leave, I don't know what he is doing now, he may still be teaching, but by far the most inspiring teacher i've ever had.
Thank you Mr. Pollard.