“Perfection doesn’t exist”
I’m aware.
“Then why can’t you just snap out of that mind frame?”
It’s as though I was born with a tendency to be my own worst enemy. When I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) at the age of seven years old, I defined myself by that anxiety. I sunk into it. I felt that if the conditions weren’t just right or if my life wasn’t planned out to the second that everything was going to spiral into a depth of doom. My anxiety stemmed out into all corners of my life, settling itself into a trait of myself I couldn’t control: a deep desire to be perfect.
I wanted to be the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect girlfriend. When I had friends desert me and spread cruel rumors about me, I felt it was my fault. When my parents got upset, I assumed I had done something wrong. It was as though I placed myself in the center of everyone’s world, not out of vanity, but out of fear that they would see through my fake smile and “need-to-make-the-world-happy” attitude. That they would twist me and break me, just by seeing that my perfection didn’t exist.
I have amazing parents and a beautiful life. I have had opportunities that many could only dream of. I don’t know where I got the idea that I needed to be perfect. My father has the same tendencies so I can only assume it is somewhat genetic. All I know is that from the time I was older and aware that I had an affect on people’s lives in any way, I didn’t hold back from doing everything in my power to destroy myself to find that nonexistent perfection.
Call me dramatic, and I’ll agree with you. I am a dramatic person. I have had people tell me as such. And I can’t be ashamed of it because as much as you try to change who you are, some things will stick with you no matter how hard you try to peel yourself away from it. And that is where I know my perfection will lie. I live in the past. In the past of failed friendships. Of “what would have happened if…” Of “if only…”
As I desperately try to live in the present, what continues to scare me is my past and my future. It limits my potential and creates a chasm in between who I am and who I want to be.
It’s been an uphill rocky mountain climb with many slips and falls along the way. I have agonized over essays, nitpicking every little thing I have done wrong. I have lost friendships because of my perfection. I have felt loss. I have cried myself to sleep. I have been that girl who can’t find out who she is in this world.
And the thing is, I still am that girl.
I love fiercely, I am passionate, impulsive, insecure, scared to death of the future and worried about not being perfect. But I’m learning. I’m learning that I can’t control what my friends do. I can’t control how others will react to who I am or what I do. I can’t hold myself responsible for people because they will make their own choices and their own assumptions of me. I can’t control it. That is such an extremely crucial element to perfectionism: control.
Control is what is fighting me and control is what is crippling me. The GAD does that and so does my deep desire to be everything that I feel others want me to be. I try to fit into a mold of what I feel perfection is. That is control. It’s as though your reaching for something that’s unattainable, you’re trying to find happiness in all the wrong places. Control doesn’t exist. And as much as I try to drill that into my mind, I falter and I fail.
I have taken great steps to figure out who I am. To create myself. To make my own decisions based on who I want to be and not on what others need me to be or want me to be. I have had to make choices that not many have liked. I have even made choices that I myself have not liked.
I’m not perfect. And though my rational mind knows that, it is my inner most being that I fight myself on every day. I will continue to fight and I will continue to create myself based on my own terms and God’s will. There isn’t a time limit even though my mind desperately tries to create one. I am finding my way minute by minute.
And when you think about it… Does anyone truly know who they are?
[Image Credit: Lauren Wingo]