The Fear of Failing

The last few weeks I was starting to believe that I could handle this whole being infertile thing. I wasn't thinking about it all of the time. I wasn't crying as much. I wasn't even angry. But, recently I've realized that instead of getting better, the hurt has manifested itself into something else. The fear of failure. I didn't recognize it until this week, but lately I've stopped trying to do even the things that come most easily to me. I wondered why. I told myself I was just too tired, or that I wasn't feeling well. But today it dawned on me that in reality I was afraid of doing all those things becasue I was sure that I'd fail. Last week I decided I wasn't going to go to my Family Processes class anymore. I figured I'd simply take and E for the semester and then retake the class in the fall when I had more time and energy. The truth is though, I didn't believe I could get an A, and I wasn't going to put in all the hard work and time, and stress myself out, if I was only going to recieve a B. To me, a B is failure. I know, I know, I'm too hard on myself. I've always been that way. I'm a true prefectionist, and it upsets me to no end when I make the slighest mistake. Besides being insanely stressful, its not healthy. But what can I do? It's who I am. And after years of not fulfilling my own unrealistic expectations for myself, I honestly feel like I'm better off not trying. The reality of my infertility only makes this worse. Am I really such a failure that I can't do the one thing I was made to do? Something that should come completely naturally? For goodness sake all I have to do is lay there!! So, needless to say, right now I'm feeling like a waste of space. I see all these people around me doing these wonderful things like writing novels and running marathons and recording CDs, and all I seem to accomplish is getting up in the morning...and even then just barely. Will I ever be able to succeed at something I want to do? Lose weight? Go places using my singing voice? Finish that novel that has been a work in progress for six years? Somehow I doubt it...