Anonymous Turmoiler: Perfecting My Relationship With Perfectionism
I suffer from perfectionism.
I even struggled with how to open this writing piece because…yep, you guessed it. I wanted it to be perfect. The trouble is I don’t even know what perfect is supposed to look, sound or feel like anymore. Like anyone else, I have a mental construct assembled in my mind of what I think it might be, but that construct is constantly evolving. It’s like I’m a mouse chasing a cube of cheese on an invisible string. It’s hanging above a huge red “X” on the ground, and if I get my toes on that spot, I’ll be in the right position to snatch the cheese and reach my goal. But instead, when I get to the “X” all I get is a nibble of cheese before the string is whisked away to a new location. And so the chase continues.
School was never ambiguous.
If I got an A on my test or paper, I knew I was that much closer to reaching my ultimate perfectionist goal: earning an A on my report card—and in college, getting as close to a 4.0 GPA as possible. I crave that positive reinforcement we used to receive. Now, I feel like I’m floundering in a sea of ambiguity. How do you measure success in your 20’s? We’re all in the same age range, yet simultaneously at different points in our lives. And it’s for that reason, that a scale to measure success does not exist. If you have a perfectionist monster within you, I’m sure it’s absolutely writhing in agony over that.
It’s not just Instagram that’s a catalyst for the comparison game. LinkedIn can be a toxic space too.
LinkedIn is like that ex I go back to, even though said ex has perpetually sucked the happy out of me. I go back because I think this time will be different. Or I forget how wretched I feel after. Or because I think I’m in a “good place” now. Or maybe I’m like a fiend who needs that little fix. Regardless, my cube of cheese slips from my fingers every time. And just when I think I might be nearing perfection, I feel like an absolute failure. It’s that black-or-white thinking that gets me in trouble with my own mind.
I think it’s the illusion of bliss that comes with the privilege of choice that paralyzes a lot of us twenty-somethings.
This decade is filled with opportunities. Grad school, career paths, cities to settle in, people to meet. But the thing about these choices is that we do not have a systematic manner in which we can measure if they are leading us closer to perfection. How can we know if we’re close to perfection if we don’t have teachers or professors guiding us with feedback on a paper or grades on a test? I know perfection is unattainable, but there’s definitely a disconnect between my mind and my gut. Intellectually, I know I’ll never reach it in any avenue of my life. But emotionally, it’s hard to accept that.
