I am a Perfectionist - ESSAY
Recently, about 40% of my head has been thinking about my
perfectionism. What it means to be a perfectionist, how it has shaped me… My obsession
with being good enough has, over the years, both plagued me and built me. Stopping
to address this – or even worse, confront it – is scarily introspective.
Self-measurement is hyper-bizarre; pushing myself to be something from inside
my head can reach surreal levels of mind-fuck.
There is so much to say about this. There is so much that
should be considered, so many different influences and issues. I’m not going to
write about it, not just yet. I want to think about this properly... I want to articulate
everything I have thought about perfectionism – all its drivers and motivations
– in the best way I can. If I write about this huge, weighty, plaguing subject I
have to word it perfectly.
End Scene.
I don’t need to point out the irony, do I? I’m scared of not
doing a good enough job of writing about not being good enough. The trouble is,
this is a huge subject. I don’t want
to commit myself to words on a screen unless they are considered and just.
And because of this, I spend so much of my life not saying
anything at all. This isn’t a revelation, I have been like this for years now.
A semi-explanation for my crippling shyness: silence cannot be attacked, but
words are endless in the possibilities they leave for getting it wrong. I am so
scared of wording things wrong, of being wrong.
I know that if I took the time to find the perfect words, I
would die before I wrote a thing. And I WANT TO WRITE! I ENJOY IT, GODDAMIT. I
made this blog, anonymously, because I wanted to give myself the freedom to NOT
be scared. I can’t waste my life on that. I have shit to do, and things to say,
that are – do I dare to say it? – WORTH saying. And they aren’t going to be
perfect.
So, after an introduction to end all other introductions…
My thoughts about perfectionism. By Cara Stray. Ha.
So, I want to be perfect. (Doesn’t everyone?) And there
isn’t much in between. If I don’t manage perfection, I exist in failure.
I don’t want to take the credit for this realisation. It has
taken other people to point this out to me, for me to look at what I do with
nay kind of objectivity. I realised the other day that what drives me to study
for exams isn’t really wanting good grades as much as not wanting bad ones. It
doesn’t seem to matter how irrelevant the test is, something in brain just
clicks and goes ‘okay, you HAVE to get top marks’. I’m not saying this to show
off, just to give an example of how extreme this has become: for me personally,
getting an okay-to-goodish grade feels like a punch in the stomach. I can’t
handle it.
I couldn’t tell you when this started. Without realising, my
life has morphed into an endless series of tick boxes. I don’t want to list all
the tasks that I set myself every day, the goals I timetable into allotted
hours and the pressure I put myself on to complete them, on time and according
to plan. It wouldn’t be not helpful to me, and I would never want to cause
someone else to feel the sickening waves of guilt that I feel when I think about
the ways other people are more productive/healthy/successful/whatever form of
measurement you can hold a tape measure up to. But, without meaning to, I make
each day into a mountain, and then I wake up (early and on time) to do the
whole thing all over again.
And of course, I am not a machine. So I never manage to do
everything the way I had wanted myself too. My expectations, my imagination, is too great.
This is an obsession. I have realised this only recently
(although it doesn’t take a genius to work that out). I think the more I do it,
the more obsessive it becomes, until I start to feel intensely guilty about
tiny things, like having forgotten to moisturise my legs, and have to
concentrate very hard on reassessing.
I’d like to be able to write about this with some sort of
hindsight or wisdom. If only I could title this blog post ‘This Is How I
Overcame Those Pesky Human Struggles’ or ‘My (Now Completed) Journey to Self-Acceptance’.
That would be more satisfying to
read. Its nicer when there is a moral in the fable.
I don’t have that. I have, however, spent a lot of time
thinking about where this perfectionism comes from, and have a lot of thoughts
I’d like to share.
Although this issue for me FEELS inherent and personal (and
is probably rooted in something very deep that I could never write about on the
internet) I do think that perfectionism is endemic. Everywhere, everything,
everyone is drenched in this ‘be better’, ‘be better than that’, ‘be better
than you can’ kind of mentality. There is no escaping this.
©
I think a lot of this is driven by the education
system I was pulled through. Day after day, the pressure, knowing that
Everything Counts, is sickening. Physically – everything is tense and shaking
in school. By the end of my time in high school, I would walk into the school
entrance, smell the sweat of classrooms, and have to wait all of five seconds
before my heart started pounding. When you write a personal statement, ‘Am I
good enough’ isn’t just an existential question to be repressed, it is a
necessary thought pattern. You have to think about what you’re doing, and how
you are living your life ALL. THE. TIME. Because its what you are told to do to
get into University (the only path in life). Urgghh, I could write for days
about the systematic pressure in our education system. Everything counts.
© Rory Gilmore, Hermione Granger… These were the
teenagers I wanted to be like. Endlessly intelligent, invincible in their work
ethic. Somehow, these icons dismantled me, because I have never managed to be
them. I’m going to write an essay about this at some point.
© The British work ethic. There is glory in running yourself down, in
continuing to work long after your body needs a break. The Book 'The Year of Living Danishly' actually really opened my eyes to this.
© Obviously, advertising. This goes without
saying. Pressure makes money. There is this quote ‘In a society that profits
from your self-doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act’ that I wrote on my
wardrobe and ignore every day. It is kind of brilliant though.
So there we go. That was an explanation of the 40% of the
thoughts in my head.
If I was a worthy writer, maybe I would take the time to find
the perfect words. The Bronte sisters didn’t just bash out their thoughts onto
a keyboard and then just hit the publish button before their work was ready.
Maybe, I should save these ideas for a publication, rather than giving out a
half-hearted attempt to the internet that anyone could take, improve and then
publish before I get the chance.