Dear Perfectionism

It’s Eve. Probably your closest follower.

For years, I strived to be you. I thought you were something worth chasing. Something that would make me worthy, successful, impressive, safe. And I chased you at the expense of my own mental health and sanity.

I never wanted to socialize because the anxiety of being perfect often clouded my ability to speak. I worried about saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, looking the wrong way. Projects became the end-all, be-all. If I wasn't constantly striving toward you, then surely the only other option was failure.

And this didn't start in adulthood. It started the moment I began school. It didn't matter what class I was in. If there was a grading scale, I needed to be at the top. Needed. Not wanted. Because somewhere along the way, I decided that if I didn't achieve perfection, I wasn't worthy of it.

And you didn't just affect the way I thought about school. You slowly changed the way I looked at my entire life. Why am I single? Clearly, I haven't mastered my style yet. Why don't I have a bigger social circle? I obviously haven't figured out how to be the right kind of person. Why don't I feel confident? Something about me must still need fixing. Everything became a problem to solve, and you always had another solution.

Social interactions became stressful, and when things became stressful, I wanted to avoid them. I remember going to the doctor for something as simple as allergies and being told, "You hold so much tension." Of course I did. My dentist noticed I was grinding and clenching my teeth. Apparently, even my jaw was tired of trying to be perfect.

And that's when I started realizing how much of my life you had actually taken over. Even my body was keeping score.

Our relationship became toxic. And eventually, I lost myself somewhere inside of it.

I remember sitting at the eye doctor and being told I needed glasses. To anyone else, this would probably be a completely normal appointment. To me? I had failed an eye exam. Somehow, needing glasses became evidence that I wasn't good enough.

And when I lost some of my hearing, I still avoided getting assistance because accepting help felt like admitting that something about me wasn't perfect. You made needing help feel like failure. You made mistakes feel like character flaws. You made ordinary human limitations feel like something I should be ashamed of.

And here's the strange part. My parents never asked me to be perfect. They celebrated the average things. They didn't make failure feel like failure. They never told me I had disappointed them because I didn't get the highest grade or achieve something perfectly. If anything, they tried to pull me out of this mindset.

But I had already decided that I was the disappointment.

They weren't putting that pressure on me. I was.

And maybe that's why you were so difficult to recognize. You sounded like me. You used my voice. You convinced me that all of this pressure was coming from somewhere outside of myself when really, I had built an entire world around the idea that I had to be perfect to deserve one.

Looking back, I think my relationship with you was really about control. Because I can't control the weather. I can't control other people. I can't control whether someone likes me. I can't control whether a relationship works out. I can't control whether my body changes. But I can control the words in an essay, the way a project looks, the grade I receive, the outfit I wear, the way I speak, and the amount of work I do.

And control felt safe. Until it didn't.

Because you taught me to confuse control with security. You convinced me that if I could just get everything right, nothing could hurt me. But life doesn't work that way. And I don't want to spend the rest of mine trying.

You've taken pieces of my life that I will never get back. You've stolen the joy from trying something new because I was too busy worrying about whether I'd be good at it. You've made experiments feel like exams. You've made mistakes that feel like evidence. You've made living feel like a test I was constantly afraid of failing.

And I'm tired.

So, Perfectionism, I think this is where we part ways.

I'm not going to promise that I'll never hear your voice again. I probably will. You'll probably show up when I try something new. You'll whisper when I make a mistake. You'll remind me that I could have done better.

But I don't have to listen anymore.

Because I'm finally realizing something:

I don't need to be perfect to be worthy of my own life.

I want to try things badly. I want to make mistakes. I want to ask for help. I want to wear an outfit that isn't quite right. I want to say the awkward thing. I want to make something that isn't perfect and love it anyway.

I want to experience life instead of constantly grading myself on how well I'm experiencing it.

So thank you, I guess.

You taught me how far I could push myself.

But now I'm learning something much more important.

How to stop.

Goodbye, Perfectionism.

I think I'll go be a person now.

Always stay warped and twisted as ever,
Eve