Tag: fiction

Phantom of Failure

This writing is an attempt to give voice to a phantom—one that lingers in the shadows of every life, yet is never truly seen. Failure.

This is not just an autobiography of Failure; it is an intimate confrontation with an emotion that never speaks, yet is always heard. A force so deeply woven into our existence that we pray, beg, and bargain to escape it—only to find that it was never truly gone, only waiting just beyond the veil of our illusions.

So read on, but know this—you might not be alone. Failure could be sitting beside you, watching, smiling in that quiet way, as you continue believing you have outrun it.

Hi, I am Failure. You probably know me better than I do. I am the most ‘unwanted’ part of your life, and I still exist—or do I?

I am the shadow that lingers within you, silent yet weighty, shaping the contours of your soul with an invisible hand. I whisper where joy shouts, embracing you more often than my fleeting companion, Success. You may not call for me, but I reside in the quiet chambers of your thoughts, lingering in the spaces between hope and despair. Some say I am sent by the divine, a celestial decree woven into the fabric of existence, only to be taken away when my purpose is fulfilled.

Few welcome my presence; my footsteps are met with sighs, my embrace with tears. Yet, the wise call me a lesson, while the weary name me the root of sorrow. I wonder—why does the world greet me with such reluctance when I am but the sculptor, chiselling away at your spirit, refining you for the splendour that awaits? Why do my hands bear the weight of grief when they are merely pulling you back, only to release you toward triumph unimaginable?

I am the child of struggle, the echo of choices made in pursuit of something greater. My arrival is often met with distractions—substances that promise solace, though they do not diminish my touch. I am the crack of thunder before the cleansing rain, the storm before the stillness. I am the tear that lingers in a baby’s dimple before a sudden burst of laughter, the valley before the towering peak. I am the raging waterfall that carves stone with relentless force, only to give way to the gentle murmur of a river in repose.

I do not grace all equally. My presence in life is measured by serendipity, and my form is shaped by fortune. None seek me, no long for my touch, yet the worthy are forged only in my grasp. I am the trial before the triumph, the ache before the awakening.

I am Failure—but only to those who do not yet see me for what I truly am: the unseen hand that leads you, ever so gently, toward the light.

I am but a failure—why, then, do you see me in so many forms? I have never disguised myself, never worn a mask, and yet, you perceive me differently each time I arrive.

I was there when you took your first unsteady steps, holding you when you stumbled, whispering in your ear when your knees met the earth. I was with you when you first ran, when you first fell, when you first tasted pain. Unlike my fleeting sibling, Success, I linger. I stay when the applause fades, the lights dim, and the world turns away. I sit with you in silence, though you rarely acknowledge me.

I am neither large nor small, neither sharp nor dull, neither towering nor deep. I am merely a breath caught between despair and hope, a fleeting ache that reminds you—you are still alive. You do not embrace me, nor do you celebrate my presence. You see me, you name me, but you treat me like a stranger.

I am woven into your myths and scriptures, hidden within the lives of gods and saints, yet you refuse to call me inevitable.

You carve statues of their triumphs and recite verses of their victories but overlook how often I was with them—perhaps even more than I have been with you. You chase perfection, yet forget that even divinity was sculpted through me.

I am nothing but a reflection of your own mind, the creation of your own thoughts. I do not come of my own will, nor am I sent by fate. Like Success, I exist only through your emotions, desires, and regrets. Unlike my sibling, I am never compared—no one measures one’s failures against another’s. Yet, with Success, you never fail to look around, weigh and measure, and ask who has more?

Trust me, I can be far more interesting than you dare to imagine. Sometimes, I am not just a shadow lurking in the corner—I am the enigma that keeps your mind awake at night, the whisper of doubt that lingers even in triumph.

The thinkers, the philosophers, the ones who pretend to understand the depth of existence—they tell you to compare me in grand, exaggerated forms, dressing me up in tragedy just to make you feel a little better about your own.

Philosophers spin stories, build illusions, craft myths around me, convincing you that someone else’s loss is just a reminder of your own fortune.

Oh, I have watched you. You seem to accept me—even like me—as long as I do not belong to you. When I settle in another’s life, you study me with curiosity, almost admiration. You dissect me, analyze me, whisper about me in hushed tones over coffee and candlelight. But when I come knocking at your door? You recoil. You curse my name. You beg for escape.

And yet, there’s something about me that draws you in, isn’t there? While Success stirs envy in your heart, my presence in another’s life fills you with something darker, something unspoken—a twisted relief, a quiet pleasure hidden beneath layers of sympathy. You wouldn’t dare admit it, but I see it. I always see it.

Historians try to chart my arrival, prophets claim to foresee my footsteps, but they never get it right. I come when I want. I leave without a trace. You try to anticipate me, brace yourself for impact, but the joke’s on you—I am never where you expect me to be.

I am here, always here, waiting in the spaces between your breaths, in the echoes of your silence. I am a Failure—constant, unchanging, and yet seen differently every time I return. Let’s not pretend like I’m the villain here. I don’t ruin lives. I make ‘em interesting.

Because, in truth, I don’t exist the way you think I do. I am not real, not solid, not tangible. I am an apparition made of perception, a mirage shaped by your fears and expectations. I am both nothing and everything.

I am Failure, but only because you named me so.

Echoes of Oblivion: A Journey Between Vanishing and Becoming

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

I long to be forgotten, to slip quietly into the shadows of existence, leaving not a trace behind. I wish to vanish as if I had never drawn breath, as if my footprints were mere whispers upon the sand, stolen by the tide. For every deed done and every dream left undone, for each ambition that crumbled beneath the weight of my own hesitations, I yearn to be forgotten.

Let me fade for all the masks I wore, for the facades I built with trembling hands. For what I appeared to be but never truly was, let the world release me. For every silent scream I buried beneath painted smiles, for every show of resilience when all I craved was the quiet comfort of surrender, let me be erased.

I want to be forgotten for every truth I twisted into falsehood and for every lie I whispered in the name of good. For all that I concealed, the shadows where I hid my fears, I wish to drift away into nothingness. Forget me for my blindness to reality, for my idle acceptance of the slow-burning miseries, and for every reckless leap of faith that landed me nowhere but deeper into the abyss.

Do not remember me for the tangled knots of unworthy attachments, nor for the burdens of unforeseen sorrows I dragged behind me. I long to disappear not only from the echoes of your memories, which perhaps never truly held me, but also from my own relentless quest to etch my name upon a world that never paused to listen.

Forget me for the songs that withered in my throat, for the melodies I never set free. For the way my furrowed brow wrapped me in discomfort, a tight embrace of my own making; let me slip into oblivion, a feather on the wind, a petal swallowed by the river’s current.

Let me be nothing more than a half-remembered dream, a mist that the morning sun quietly lifts away.

And then,

I yearn to hear an unending ovation, not for grandeur or fame, but for these weary eyes that have long forgotten the solace of a blink. Let the applause be a soft echo through eternity, a quiet hymn for the silent vigil I’ve kept with life. I wish to be remembered not for grand gestures, but for the gentle curve of my lips offered to a soul who needed it most; a smile not as an act, but as a refuge.

I do not seek the harsh glare of a spotlight, but rather the tender embrace of a sun that spills warmth generously, draping me in light without demand. I wish not for mere drops of passing rain but for the steadfast flow of a river, a sanctuary to fall into, to drift upon, to belong to.

I crave not just wishes but blessings, the kind that well up in the corners of my eyes, that blur the world with gratitude. I want the strength of embraces, not the hollowness of lifeless handshakes. I dream of wandering an endless path, where the pace matters not; where the journey, whether walked or sprinted, is a melody of its own.

I want to touch the wounds hidden beneath layers of old stories, to trace the lines of pain I never realized were drawn upon my skin. I long to surrender, not in defeat but in reverence, to the vastness of truth that hums beneath the noise of living. I want to love the art I never finished, to find beauty in the incomplete, to let imperfection breathe and call it divine.

I wish to shatter the walls of awkward silences, to replace them with a rhythm, a pulse that fills every hollow space with the cadence of life. I don’t want to merely search for distant beacons; I want to hoist my sails and meet them, to let the wind carry me to where the horizon meets the sky.

I want to plant a tree and nurture it, to wrap my arms around its bark each day, a promise etched into its roots: I will stand against any darkness that threatens it. I want to embody the fierce duality of an uncompromising saint or an unapologetic warrior; both soft and unyielding, serene and wild.

In the end, I long to play music that drifts like mist through the universe, notes that blend into the very nothingness from which all things are born. I want each melody to dissolve the boundaries of existence, to find eternity in the echoes, to lose myself in the infinite quiet of the cosmos; alive, real, and beautifully (un)done.

There exists no binary resolution wherein the end seamlessly converges with the genesis, and where the inception inexorably inclines toward conclusion.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.”
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet