Edited by: Stuti Sharma
If you did not have an identity crisis during winter break, can you really call yourself an Ashokan?
If that’s the case, I, for a fact, know that I am a true Ashokan. Sitting around in my room, having nothing in particular to do, having no academic demand to fill the gaping void inside my chest, I thought about all my past experiences and interactions in which I have felt less than myself.
This is also known as overthinking.
This time around I struggled with differentiating my personality from the lifelong, yet futile, act of being perfect. What am I if not the ‘perfect’ student? The ‘perfect’ friend, the perfect ‘daughter’? Hell, even the ‘perfect’ girlfriend? These are the regular thoughts of a chronic people-perfectionist.
I’ll try to explain.
Being perfect and trying to project perfection are two very different pursuits.
Being perfect, is of course, an unreachable goal if you are trying to target all aspects of your life. If your expectation of yourself is to never fall short of your unachievable expectations, then you definitely will. Burn out, feelings of self-dissatisfaction and an overall lack of self-respect will follow. But this is not what I mean by being a people-perfectionist.
People-perfectionists will do anything to make people believe that they are virtually without flaw. This is not done by bragging, or having misplaced confidence. This is done by pandering to people’s ideal of perfection, so they accept you. The problem lies in the fact that everyone has a different image of ‘perfect’. Thus, people-perfectionists roam around being containers for people’s expectations, filled to the brim with putrid liquid. They disregard their very core values if it means being likable to the person in front of them. They hate themselves if the person in front of them questions the perfect-ness of their character.
How do I know this? I was this person for as long as I can remember. Every day I woke up and vowed to the least disagreeable person possible. Every morning I decided to act in order to be widely accepted and liked, forgetting that if I do that I may not be loved. I was ‘nice’ or ‘caring’. Never was I brave, outspoken, wild, courageous. I was always kind, never a bitch. I was always pacified, never indignant for what I wanted.
People liked me, but then I had to show up, every day, as the person I pretended to be. Sometimes I hated this person. I shut the voice that told me to drop the act up, and found comfort in the fact that ‘at least they are happy’. It is tiring to not be able to be yourself, but it is terrifying to not know who you are.
The feeling of being liked is addictive. It gives one the drive to wake up every day and decide to choose others over themselves. To choose their image over their soul. Sadly, once they start changing their manner to suit the fancy of others, they lose identity. They forget how to be people, they become vessels, with no self identity apart from how they exist in the company of others.
I cannot say that it was an exhausting experience, because it wasn’t an ‘experience’. It was my whole life. And I have finally sighed a breath of relief.
If you relate to what I described above, I have hope for you. If you let the act slide, you will find someone who loves you. This time love will not be the impending doom of abandonment, but it will nurture what you love most about yourself. It will not be believing in its eventual death, it will not be an act, it will not be a chore, it will be the care you should have shown yourself. When someone loves you intensely once you drop the act, you will feel ashamed for not having loved yourself enough to be bold.
To be an individual is to be polarizing. To be disagreed with, fought with, hated even. But it is also to be loved and cared for passionately. If you take the risk, and have the courage to be disliked, chances are someone will love you as deeply as you deserve.