Being mature is the only way out.. and it's damning.

 * Being mature (and eating ice cream) is the only way out and it's damning.

We're going to start from a few days back.

Last day of October. We were going to host a webinar that day - Money Management for Women, while also studying up for an upcoming exam on the 3rd. I got all ready (only the top half of course) checked the camera angles on Zoom, practiced my intro and exit and then waited with the host (an external speaker we'd called to give the talk). Mom finally came home at 6, too on the nose for my liking. I put myself on mute and spoke to her and then we waited..  waited until the minutes passed away. Five and then ten, then fifteen. Even by that time, only 2 of the 23 registered participants turned up. Sadly, then, we decided that it was best to pull the plug on the whole thing because there was no point otherwise. It's the exact same feeling a child would get on hosting a whole birthday party, sit with his party hat in the living room with the balloons and cakes for friends who never show up. It's sad, it's pitiable and really embarrassing. Meanwhile, all I could hear was how bad this was and that we should never do it again. For further context, it was hard work setting it up and sending these messages out because just the previous day I discovered I'd gotten the syllabus wrong (studied taxes on current year while I was going to be tested on the previous year).

I did what any "mature" human would do. Cry and distract myself midway by my current fav type of YouTube videos. It felt sad, sure, but I absolutely refused to talk about it and studied the easy stuff that night instead. I refused to talk about it because I knew what was coming and just said it to myself instead 'I need to put in more work' or 'This won't matter in the long run' or 'Make sure you don't ruin your exam as well because of this' or 'Maybe ice cream will work'. 

That's how I took my own word and made sure that there was ice cream that night to properly stuff my face in it.

Then came morning fresh and bright. With that, emails. And a prospect that was on the fence about us (for weeks!) told us they wouldn't be working with us right that day. So okay. 

So far, so good. We still had some ice cream to deal with this.

Then today, I actually properly and truly failed. When I even felt that I had answered enough to score a 50/150 surely. The system told me I hadn't. For somebody who can literally count on the tips of her fingers when she failed and on what papers, this was a bit much. 

My reaction right here validated my hypothesis about maturity. This time I went with a weirder platitude 'Maybe this phase is the story I'll give for my struggle period when I become rich and famous because God knows I'm so fucking privileged that I haven't had to struggle any other way' and 'Hey wait, I think you have another cup of the ice cream left!'.

I shed a tear (two to be exact, more wouldn't fall) AND BOOKED MY SEAT FOR RE-EXAMINATION right then. 

How damning is this!! How easy it would be to just be a bitch about this whole thing instead!!  Curse my life and connect the patterns and proclaim to the Heavens that I have been mistaken about my life choices. 

The damnest thing of all? I am actually delighted at dealing with this without become a slobbering mess of tears and throwing a blanket over my head. Waao, maybe this is what it feels like to be a proper functioning human being! Don't want to jinx this AT ALLLL. Unless... Is this abnormal and symbolic of something else that's going to go wrong? Or is this about complacency? I'm not complaining though, not if it's not a complete paralysis. Besides, I finished off my ice cream today. I think that's good luck - no more bad news if I can't drown it out! :)