For as long as I can remember I have hated making mistakes. The earliest example I can think of this was when I was 8 and was at a Birthday party where I was given pop. Pop was something of a luxury for me and reveled in being able to blow bubbles in it. Unfortunately blowing bubbles in my pop had the foreseeable result of the pop bubbling out of the can and ending up all over my good clothing. I was so upset that I cried for about an hour because I was sure my parents would be disappointed in me. They weren't.
In high school and at the beginning of university I would often hold back from raising my hand to answer questions or if I did raise my hand by the time it was my turn to respond my heart would be raising and my face would be a lovely shade of red as I spat out my response to the question. This fear of making mistakes continues to persist in my life in the strangest of ways. For example I sometimes struggle with speaking french because I am very concerned with making a grammatical error. Francophones for the most part of course don't mind if you make mistakes, they are just glad that someone is trying to speak their languages.
Recently I have been making a ridiculous number of mistakes. It probably started when I returned from South Africa regretting that I had not told a certain individual how I felt about him. I found myself sitting up at night thinking about him and eventually sent him a letter telling him how I felt. This was not a mistake. It didn't change my feelings for the person one bit, but they were out there and known and sharing that load made things just a bit easier.
When I arrived back in Halifax I almost immediately started spending time with a new fellow who I had known before but not very well. I discovered that we shared a number of similar interests and dove head first into having the most ridiculous crush on him than perhaps I have ever experienced.
After about a month of this, I felt uncertain as to where I stood with him so I started to try to find ways to tell, asking friends advice, trying to engage in additional physical contact, but I couldn't tell how he felt, although it had become more clear that I was not the only woman after his affections.
With the added bit of stress I decided to step it up a notch and tried to find ways or opportunities to tell him how I felt. Some of these were missed others never materialized. So in a move of exasperation I prepared a straightforward hand written note which I handed to him last Sunday. The following week unfolded for me and involved a theatrical performance which was attended by said person and additional encounters in group settings. I also mistakenly sent a text message to him which was intended for a friend which read "He came to my performance last night and he was beaming at me the entire time. Still no word on the note" It took me 3 hours to realize this text had not gone to the right person and I was totally mortified.
As the week went on my nerves became more frayed and I began to try to push for an answer. Eventually I asked him over facebook whether he had read the note and he said he had and that we'd talk but all subsequent attempts to make plans have failed. (In fairness to him he has been really busy with school work and I may not be being sensitive enough to this).
So obviously I have made a number of errors throughout this saga, ranging from my almost hilarious text message to the more serious mistake of diving into a new crush to try to forget about something across the ocean.
Of course we all make mistakes. To me this feels like a pretty massive one.
This particular string of mistakes seems to point to the sentiment that if you ever expect to find true love, you have to put up with a lot of heart ache along the way.
More importantly it raises the question: how can one learn if they never make mistakes?
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