Dissecting Failure

Failure feels like tasting the metallic twang of blood in your mouth when your opponent has shoved his elbow sharply in your ribs. It is the final blow and nothing worse can happen now.

You can relax.

As the audience cheers and your body lies scrunched up on the floor in excruciating pain, you wonder how 'real' sportsmen really do it.

The audience cheers loudly now and he's raising both his hands dramatically in the air as he begins yelling.

"VICTORY!" he screams and the crowd goes wild. Meanwhile, you lie writhing in pain from the many blows he showered you with.

You met him only yesterday, on a more informal ground. You had shared techniques and laughed over inside jokes that no one else would have understood had they been listening in on your conversation.

But today, this, this very situation is purely professional.

You wonder what would have happened had the roles been reversed. Would he be thinking and feeling the same things as you right now? Are you both really that different at the very core of your being?

"That is what the difference is." your Master would have said in his tough voice. A pause followed by, "You feel too much, my son."

Failure feels like one million pins sticking out of every inch of your bare, visible skin when you can't even cry. A grown man crying? Like that would gain sympathy.

Failure feels like you've temporarily gone deaf. Like you can't hear anything around except the continuous, dull thump of your heart. Like a sad, sad song on loop.

It feels like having both your wisdom teeth pulled out at the same time by a sadist of a dentist. Oh, damn him to hell, it hurts like nothing you've ever felt before.

It makes you imagine what dying would be like. Will anyone cry for you? Will they say nice things that people tend to say at funerals? The usual recipe of - He was such a good human being, I hope he is happy wherever he is, He was taken away too soon but he led a fulfilling life. Seriously, is there a guidebook for this?

You feel like trading your current failure of a life with someone who was taken away too soon. He might've won this war had he been here instead of you, you reason. He deserved to be here more.

You wish someone would listen to your thoughts and rescue you from here for even strong men need to be saved from their own personal demons every once in a while; but while you lie bloody on the battleground, there is little hope for you. So as the days go by, you block it all out, you shut your eyes and close your mind to that horrid day, letting it turn into a distant memory, the only reminder of which stays as a scar above your right brow that he left ever so carefully, forcing you to remember every time you look at yourself in the mirror.



Disha

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