Striving for the perfect 10
I know I haven't been writing much but between finishing the first draft of my book and just dealing with ::waves hands in the air::, I've been having a hard time finding a topic that writes well. Everything I've tried to write in recent weeks as just felt whiny or simply was not coming out right. In a weird way, that kind of brings me to the topic at hand...
Perfection
Anyone that's known me for a while knows that I loathe making mistakes. Now, I'm not talking about just run of the mill every day kind of mistakes... if I walk into a wall or trip over my own feet I just forget about it. I've always been a klutz anyway. The mistakes I'm talking about are those that affect other people... namely mistakes that I make while working.
Yes, everyone makes mistakes, but somehow, years ago, I got it into my head that I needed to be perfect. Maybe it's because of how I was treated by previous employers, maybe it's because I went through jobs so quickly right out of college... I'm not sure. But if I make a mistake, it doesn't matter how big, how small, or how easy it was to fix, I will beat myself up about it for days after the fact.
At the last job I worked at in Massachusetts, any time my boss called me into his office, I would always say, "I didn't do it!" It kind of became a running joke between us because 95% of the time he just needed to talk something through with me, but I could never get that out of my head. It didn't help that this particular office simply loved bringing mistakes up over and over again. You know the beginning of Office Space when Peter has to talk to 5 different people about forgetting the cover sheet on his TPS reports. Yeah... it was like that but without the comedy.
So where did this need for perfection come from? It's something I've been grappling with for years. I've said that I felt the need to be perfect to compete with my siblings. I've said that I believed if I were perfect then maybe people would have cared more about me when I was younger. I've come up with a million different reasons for why I feel the need to be perfect, but here's the kicker...
I never feel like I have to be fake with people. In my every day life, I am 100% authentically me and if I say or do something stupid, my friends and I can just laugh it off (cue the mailman jokes). I'm never worried that the friends I've made will just up and leave because I make a mistake. On the contrary, I know that these people will have my back through thick and thin because they've proven that time and time again.
Going so many years and never feeling as though people care about you really has an impact on the way you live your life. You tend to not rely on others for comfort or advice. People say they care, but you just assume that they'll never follow through with anything. If the last 9 months or so have taught me anything, it's that I actually have people who care about me now. People who will listen to me ramble or cry or scream or swear. People who will video chat with me just to make sure I'm ok. People who will offer to come up to my neighborhood during a pandemic if I need them to (though I would never expect that of ANYONE!). People who simply reach out because they know how lonely I can get.
I think this need for perfection is 100% tied to the "no one cares" notion. That if I were perfect, then people would care. But here are people who care in spite of the crazy shit I do and say. Maybe once I really let that sink in, I won't feel like I have to be perfect anymore. Maybe once I realize that I can be human and make mistakes, I'll finally learn to rely on others when those mistakes happen.
It's a difficult thing to unravel, really, but it's all tied together. The need to make everyone happy, to be perfect, to be independent, to not rely on others, to never feel like a burden, to back away when things get bad (so as not to bring others down)... it's all connected. Every one of those strings goes back years and is tied to a different event or trauma in my life. Figuring out how to untangle or even cut those strings is going to take time, but as long as I remember that I have people in my corner to hand me the scissors, I know I can make that cut.
- DB
