A Letter From Failure
The Companion You Never Chose Pt. 1
Dear Leyla,
I watched you packing the car that morning three years ago.
Those last boxes wedged between ambition and grief. Your dog curled silently in the backseat, unaware that you were leaving more than a city. You left community, routine, and your sense of certainty behind in that Colorado driveway. You believed this cross-country move, this next rung on the ladder, was the beginning of everything you worked for in your corporate career. But I knew better.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t say this harshly.
I’m not the typical villain, the one wearing a grimace with malice in heart.
Although, I know you saw me that way for a long time. I’ve been called many names by you over the years: betrayal, burnout, imposter syndrome, divorce, even sabotage.
I don't blame you.
I arrived quietly, like a bad feeling you couldn't place. It began shortly after you arrived in your new city ready to take on a high-profile role. But the depth of who I am began in the belittling emails, the 12AM revisions, the meetings where others began to disappear into chats to gossip even though you were present, and the intentional meetings you were left out of.
Your days blurred into each other: onboarding yourself into a role that kept shifting, performing under the weight of silence, proving your worth to leaders too preoccupied to see you.
I saw you, though.
I saw you tuck your brilliance under layers of appeasement like a tail, handing over your confidence in exchange for micromanaged approval.
You were slowly negotiating with your soul and everything that lit you up inside faded because you had to “play nice”. You couldn’t be seen as angry, arrogant, bossy, a b*tch, or a push over. You were too much and not enough, which is never a balanced line to walk.
And when someone you once looked up to said, "This isn't a good fit," I felt you snap inside.
It wasn’t just the comment, it was that it came from someone you had respected.
Someone you moved across the country to work for.
Someone who, when forced to choose, didn’t choose you. That moment wasn’t about the role. It was about the story you’d told yourself, that loyalty and achievements would shield you from harm. But it didn’t.
It was a cruel realization. But it was the first honest one.
You didn’t fall apart right away. In an act of desperation, you tried to fix it; you wanted to fix everything. The years you invested had to mean more.
You were pandering, perfecting, redrafting, revising. Remember the moment your boss marked up her own edits thinking they were yours? That’s when you started to understand: I wasn’t here to destroy you. I was here to reintroduce you to yourself.
You left. You didn’t storm out.
You exited with dignity, and a raw kind of freedom. You stood on the edge of a new life, terrified. And that’s where I really began to do my work.
Moving to a new country (UAE) wasn’t the escape. It was the mirror. New light. New soil. New oxygen. Slowly, as your nervous system settled, you began to see me differently.
I wasn’t punishment; I was a catharsis.
I hadn’t come to end your story, I’d come to burn down the wrong version of it.
As I write this letter to you Leyla, I’m proud you completed your first client project from your own firm. You made space for your company, the one you started years ago but never fully gave yourself to, and are now receiving glowing praise. Now I see some signs of the true you slowly returning.
You had finally accepted that success isn’t a ladder. It’s a landscape. Wild, shifting like a forest, often lonely, but yours to chart. You no longer needed someone else’s validation to make you feel real.
You found that life doesn’t always reward the loyal.
That effort doesn’t always equal outcome.
That bad leaders aren’t mentors, sadly, they’re mirrors of their own insecurities. But you also found this: your worth is not provisional.
You found GOD in so many things, in the breath you took under a Dubai sunrise when you realized: "This wasn’t the end. It was the the reroute of my life’s journey."
I stayed with you because that’s what I do. Failure isn’t the opposite of success. I’m its co-creator. Some liken me to a ghostwriter. No, wait, that’s still spooky. Let’s stick with “Co-creator”.
Remember what Rumi said:
"Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you."
You now understand that every perceived detour of every closed door, every sleepless night, every sting of dismissal, was actually me, ushering you home.
I anchored you in humility, cracked open your ego, and handed you a deeper version of yourself.
James Baldwin wrote, "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read" and something speaks to your soul in the words that says—You are not alone, Leyla.
And neither is the reader who sees themselves in your story. We all carry me: Failure is my name. Whether in our pockets, or big backpacks, pretending we don’t know the weight.
But now that you’ve stopped running from me, maybe they can too.
So, what do you do when your dream job becomes your nightmare, or life shatters into pieces?
You think of a phoenix… You rebuild. You redefine. And if you're lucky, you resurrect.
With love, always,
The Companion You Never Chose Named Failure
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
Confucius
💭When was the last time you realized the failure you feared was actually the catalyst you needed? Write it down.
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Wonderful.