The Myth of My Perfect Self: Learning to Live Without Flawlessness

Once, in kindergarten, I had worn out my teacher's patience with the chattiness of my class—except mine, because with my people-pleasing and nervousness thrown together, I was always on my good behavior. One day, I alone was allowed to sit in on our daily "rest" period, when we would lounge and snack on whatever came from our parents' lunchboxes and talk about each other.". I was normally always quiet during these, having no friends as such at the time. But today, at the teacher's instruction, the whole room was quiet. The rest of my class sat there, arms in foreheads in the darkness, staring at me while I crunched away on my goldfish and drank my little water bottle, just as embarrassed as I was oddly proud of being the only student who'd played by the rules.

My kindergarten teacher portrayed me as the ideal student—because I was always quiet.

This once made me proud. I think back now, and pride vanishes, is filled with strangeness and loneliness, with embarrassment and shame.

I wasn't higher than anyone else in my class. I was simply too afraid to speak.

It took me twenty-three years to realize that I will never be perfect.

But that isn't the only knock. Not only was I never going to be flawless, but I was never flawless to start with. There never was this flawless me to go back to, like I thought there was. The quiet, nice child from that kindergarten class wasn't flawless. The straight-A compliant middle school kid wasn't flawless. The anxious high schooler, so desperate to impress and to please, wasn't flawless in any respect. And this less-than-perfect adult version of myself is so suffocating that I strangle under it every day. But what's really, actually changed over all those years?

My childhood self isn't that different from my adult self, because that child self is me, just as much as my adult self is me. That anxiety, that silence, that desire for approval—I still sit with all of them. I am still the lone student alone in the dark, drinking and eating and attempting to determine what about me is so vastly different from everyone else—is it actually this sense of being "good", or is it merely fear that's holding me back, holding me separate?

I am forever constrained by others' expectations, to the point of questioning precisely how much makes me sick. Each answer I provide in a text message, each person I respond to in conversation, each word, each thing said, each breath I inhale, is written with the expectation of them thinking that I am normal, since I am not, and never have been.

I have a mind that runs a million miles an hour, and a mouth that won't open to utter anything that happens within it.

I have a family who—while they are hardly perfect—loves me nicely. I have a boyfriend who—is not perfect either, hence why we do seem to get along so nicely, maybe—loves me a great deal too. And I love them, I truly do. I am not always conscious of feeling the presence and the strength of my love, but it is there, and they know that it is. But even with this, even with the kindness of being deeply loved, I have never felt so less alone, and I liked being alone. I liked being to myself, with myself, because it made my mind go everywhere it couldn't go when I was with another person. As I remember it, I existed almost wholly in fantasy.

Memories come back to me now, and they are incorrect, although they are incredibly real, and incredibly me at the time. There is such an odd disconnect between my past and me, between me and my brain now.

Now that I'm grown, I can't quite go back there to that realm of fantasy, no matter how hard I try, because I always seem to end up coming back to me. To my mistakes. To my flaws. To my reality—to the very essence of my own self. And this terrifies the daylights out of me.

It fills me with anger against myself. It makes me think of hopelessness, loss, terribly unhappy endings. I live in shame at my own lies and falsehood and cowardice and foul thoughts, thoughts which had been stifled and repressed, thoughts which can never spill over to others.

I am confused by the darkness of my mind, and tormented by the persistent awareness of my own idiosyncrasies. Why was I only in my own mind for so many years of my childhood? Why do I require connection but cannot go and find it in a healthy way? Why do I lie? Why don't I care as much as I should? Why am I a hypocrite? Why am I so fearful? Why am I not working hard enough? Why did I do that? Why have I been a fool? Am I without empathy? Am I without the gifts that I believed I had? Is it ever too late for me? Do I even know anything about myself at all? Who am I? Who do I want to be? Do I have the capability to be truthful about anything? Or are other people's views and perceptions of me more important than my own sense of self?

For as long as I have been alive, I have lived in fantasy. In everything other than myself, and my own way of life. I lived in dreams of my own. I woke up each morning only to create my own world instead of living in my own. I bored myself so much that I destroyed myself because of my own tale. I stifled my sense of being, because I did not enjoy myself. And I was so afraid to confess how much I hated myself that it almost killed me when I had to. I had to stare at my self in the mirror and say, this is me. This is real. There is nothing else but this. This is it. (BoJack reference, for all my media nerds)

Now, balance is seemingly unattainable. I am stuck to the ground, immobilized by my own deception, wretched self, by my own atrocious mistakes and judgments, by my own twisted reasoning in the past. I am the only one to come to life to think about some of the things that I have thought about, or to be able to function in the way that I do. I am trapped within myself. It is too late to start over. It scares me how desperate I would be to start over, to be given another chance, to do everything over.

And yet again, I would fail myself. I would beat myself up. I would beg and plead for a second chance, for another way to turn back time.

Because I was never, ever going to be perfect.

And I'm really struggling with that.

I never really thought of myself as a perfectionist before I started attending therapy. I wasn't trying to be perfect. I wasn't even trying to be good. Because I was good. To me, I was a good person, and that was something that couldn't be changed. As long as I was alive, I'd be living it up. I'd always be good. I'd always be mature. I'd always make the right decision. I'd always get good grades. I'd always struggle along, and succeed.

But that version of me who was struggling to do all those things—which were, in fact, achievements, and not merely a state of being—wasn't doing it for me. It was doing it for other people. I never once tried to be an ideal person for me. A smart person for me. A good person for me. I never tried to get something for myself. The only thing I ever did for myself was write, and that was honestly just a means of escaping myself even further. And that's a frightening thing to realize—that without other people's desires, I have nothing.

And the lengths that I went to achieve this ideal self of mine were what eventually destroyed my already warped sense of self for good. Every time I messed up, I bottled it. I kept it in. I lied about it. I denied it. I denied my own humanity, my capacity to sin. I disappeared into my head. I created worlds to escape myself. I recreated my reality in my own mind. I hid it, shelving it away as someone else's rather than sorting it out for myself.

I did this for years. I did not want to accept the bad about me. I let things go to rot and become festering sores. I became an actor in my own life; I was like that for almost as long as I can remember, even as a kid. I was so anxious to please that I never developed a real sense of self. I just played role after role. I lived at half-mast. I struggled with what I had, as best I could, but it wasn't sufficient. I lost a part of myself each time.

None of those characters was able to fully make me me, because none of them were flawless. The pushover wasn't flawless. The liar wasn't flawless. The faker wasn't flawless. The coward wasn't flawless. The cool, relaxed version of me wasn't flawless. The try-hard wasn't flawless, either. None of these was the listener, or the cheater, or the empath, or the cold hearted loner. I devoted myself to endless different versions of myself in an effort to chase down the perfect me. Now I realize that I am left with nothing.

Even in this midst of nothing, I hold onto hope.

I began writing this because I was lost. I was tired. I was repulsed and sad in my own body. I felt shame. I felt a mix of self-pity and self-resentment, and I was angry, too. I wanted to blame the Internet. I wanted to blame my childhood, my family, for my lostness and my feelings. And I wanted to blame my past self, for not living up to the ideals of an ideal me.

But the Internet was an old thing that didn't know any better. My folk didn't know any better. I didn't know any better. Anything in life does what it's meant to, with everything it's got. We all are, and we all try, and we all fail, and we all try again. Some of us die. We quit, somehow or another. But a lot of us keep getting up, keep going, keep trying.

And all this guilt can hold, and it can be the apocalypse, but it comes to nothing in the end. The past is over, and it will never change. What we can change is now, and that's present. And in holding on to hope, I want to hold on to my present, and to myself, my real self, for maybe the very first time in my life.

I don't know how not to punish myself for how I hurt, betrayed, underwhelmed, and disappointed myself in the past. Because I'm never going to be perfect, and that really, really sucks. I even sometimes feel like I'll never feel good, or proud, about anything that I'll ever accomplish. I want to prove myself wrong. I want to be stronger, better, kinder, more genuine. I want to be committed to something. I want to publish a book. I want to leave my job. I want to be someone to myself.

It has been easy to slip into despair of late. I am not proud of who I've been lately. I am afraid of what I think, of the darkness in my head. I am lost and bewildered when it comes to figuring out how to make myself choose what kind of person I am. I distrust all of it and am ashamed to do so, from my sins that are shameful to the things as mundane as my own tastes and interests—my hair, my face, my career, my ethics, my politics, my music. I attempt to cover it up. I try to sound assertive, but I always feel like I mess it up.

Short version—I'm ashamed, I'm scared, I feel like I don't have the slightest clue who I even am, and I don't know the first thing about what the fuck I'm doing, and I'm seriously trying to wrap my head around how everyone else seems to be doing just fine in this crap heap of a world. I know they're probably struggling, too, but it just doesn't seem like it. Every day, I give in. I break down. I cry. I'm human, just like we all are, and it's just so hard. I'm ashamed not to be doing better. I am so incredibly blessed, but I'm so sad, too. I'm so scared of the future, of change, of moving on, of dying. I am a kid in a grown-up body, stuck and still and totally pathetic.

I don't know that I'm good. I don't know that I can transform in the ways I want to transform. But I am pinning hope and trust on my present self to do her best. I'm forcing myself to have the hope, because only hope could conquer despair.

The good in me says to me that I don't need an immaculate me anymore, but a good me for myself, a me to be proud of having. I am not lost. I am not evil. I am human. And I want to know more about me, even if I don't like some of what I learn, because I can learn and I can change. We all can.

And I want to hear that side a little bit more.

I love you guys, and thanks a lot for listening.