Perfection
July 7, 2017
I’m scared.
I guess I always have been. My entire life has been driven by fear.
Anxiety from speaking. Worrying about the future. About what others think.
When I write or record, I have the power to check what I’m saying, go back and rewrite if I like, erase things… and so that alleviates some of the stress. Even if I can get to the point where I’m satisfied with what I create, there remains the nagging feeling that compared to everything else, I’m still just ordinarily ignorable. I’m a perfectionist. I haven’t decided if it’s healthy or not. For now it’s both good and bad. Good for whatever I create, bad for my mental state.
If I predict that I won’t be able to do it perfectly, I won’t do it at all. I’m scared of the worst possible scenarios the future could bring.
It’s the same with relationships. I have no real friends. I go on no dates. What’s the point of being someone’s confidante if I’m not perfect? If they’re not perfect? I’m holding myself to impossible standards. But the anxiety is real. I’m scared if I’m not perfect, they’ll see me as tarnished and ignore me. One wrong move, and I become a blemish in some person’s backlist of idiots they make fun of.
It’s great for winning go tournaments, where you have to play as close to perfectly as you can. Great for work, where efficiency is crucial for maximizing output. Good for my songs, where I can rake through the thousand takes I sang for a single line of music. Bad for living life in the fear of making a mistake.
A new temp at work is getting under my skin a little. She is whiny, judgmental, privileged, passionless, and extremely self-centered. A twenty-year old raised by technology. Is this the fidgety, pinball-machine attention-spanned, EDM-laser-light-entranced audience I have to pander to in the future?
Elizabeth moved in with her boyfriend. We were together for years, and never even got to being alone together without feeling the pressure of her parents wanting us to break up. We could never completely just relax and be us. It was uncomfortable. I figured what’s the point of investing myself in the relationship if it’s going to be like this? So I just withdrew. And I waited until everything could be perfect, and we could just be us. But it ended.
But this guy? They’re living together and seem really happy. Like, really fucking happy. Some perfect guy she adores and her parents approve of. I’ve never met him or even know anything about him, but in my mind, he’s better than me in every single way. Richer, taller, more handsome, not balding like me, more muscular, older, more experienced. He’s the perfect guy I would have been if the conditions were right. He’s living the life I was supposed to live. With her.
The day will come when she’ll get engaged, and then the day will come when she gets married. Like Nell did. When I found out they moved in together I lost it a little bit and bought a brand new Mac on the spot. I can’t control my life, but at least I’ll be able to control how perfect my songs ought to be.
I’m more or less over Nell. She still represents the idea of the perfect girl to me, but she’s too far removed from my actual life for me to remember what it’s like to be that much in love. And I am over Elizabeth. I broke up with her as much as she broke up with me. I did everything I could to sabotage the relationship, so she’d think it was her idea when she decided to dump me. I was a coward. I know I was. A coward is born only in the face of danger. There was too much for me to run away from in that relationship.
But with this guy?? It’s so easy. Their life together seems so easy and happy and perfect. With no effort. Why? Why does everything I’m a part of have to become some journey of struggle and self-discovery? Why does happiness get delivered to their doorstep, while I have to fight for morsels on the ground? That’s what I’m mad about. That I have to witness love blossoming in all the places I’ve left behind, like nothing beautiful can grow when I’m around, but as soon as I leave, life starts to flourish. It’s not fair.
That’s what I want to say… it’s not fucking fair. I never asked to have all this anxiety. I never asked to be born as a freak in a strange place. I can’t relate to my own race because I grew up in America. I can’t relate to Americans because I’m not white. I never asked to be skinny. I never asked to be weak and ugly. I never asked to feel constantly alienated. I never asked to be pursuing happiness all my life, only to have it ripped out from under me time and time again. I never asked to be so different.
It’s made me work hard for what I want. To work and dream harder than any normal person to get to the same heights that they can reach with a hop. Yet now I’ve been made to realize that working too hard is going to hurt my social life. Working hard is going to alienate anything in my life that’s not work. Working hard is going to suck the time out of my schedule like a thirsty vampire, and leave me no time to do anything else. Working too hard will leave me looking back on my life and regretting the life that I could have just enjoyed.
It’s not fucking fair. That’s what I want to say. Why am I being punished? That’s what I would have asked as a younger man. That’s exactly what I did ask, actually. But I’m not who I used to be. I’m not 20. I’m not going to whine. I have to look for a way. I have faith that the passion I bring and the sacrifices I make will guide me. I have to become what I believe is missing in today’s world. The saying goes… if you need a hero, become one.
That’s what I call my perfectionism… passion. Semantics. Empowerment? Or self-delusion? Don’t bullshit yourself. Underneath, it’s all the fucking same. So embrace it.