Perfect

Writers are constantly told to write what they know. Well, what happens when I don’t know anything? What if all I think I know ends up being untrue or not the full picture? What if I am not loving enough to a person I include in the narrative? What if the thoughts I include aren’t accurate? What if what I write isn’t enough to convey what I mean?

So I stand at a Chipotle line, cracking my mental knuckles in preparation for the bloody, back-alley fight between truth and my self-worth. Among all these swirling questions, one surfaces in my mind as I try to compose: What will you do wrong?

~

 “You did nothing wrong,” comes her answer the next morning, following the rejection.

Well, I think as I drive to work, you may not have done anything wrong, but you certainly could have done better.

~

I got my first job in 2020. I was an indoor painter. A real barn burner of a job, you know? A bucket of cream-colored paint, a roller, and eight hours of up and down on doors and walls.

I didn’t like that job very much. Not only because I didn’t particularly care to learn that two-inch 50-50 nylon polyester-blend brushes are the best for cutting around outlet covers and baseboard edges, but also because I was always extremely anxious to do my job and do it well. Nearly every single work day, I would get up, get dressed, get anxious about the day ahead, throw up, and go to work. At first, I thought that the vomiting would get better because I’d get more used to the job, but it didn’t really.

One time, I remember not having to throw up before work. I was a little excited about it, too, because I was making progress toward being a man — a good worker who doesn’t get anxious about making a mistake, because he just won’t make one.

I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of my boss’s van, and the radio was playing on our 40-minute commute. Some announcer on the show was asking the question of the day, where you could phone in and get some prize for correctly answering.

“Can you pull over?” I asked my boss.

“Did you want to stop to guess the radio clue?”

“No,” I said, weakly. “I have to throw up.”

That was super embarrassing. Of course, that experience reinforced in my mind that I could not beat this vomit habit, and my anxiety only worsened.

This became a pattern each morning. Wake up, get ready, throw up, go. Wake up, get ready, throw up, go. I guess I always thought each day would contain some new thing, some terror that would leap out of that fresh second coat of paint. And just what exactly was that terror? I have no clue. Maybe there’d be a little mean elf who’d pop out of nowhere with a Chipotle steak bowl that he’d chuck against my freshly painted wall, just to spite me. I’d never be able to tell you what that terror actually was — you can’t screw up painting a wall that badly (and if you did, it could always be repainted clean).

Regardless, the screw-ups are still the only memories that consistently replay in my head from that job, like when I accidentally sanded a cabinet thinking it was part of the wall, or when I spilled my drink on the floor, or when I didn’t roll out a coat correctly.

I worked that job for six months. After it was over, I never wanted to work again.

It didn’t matter what my boss said, what my family said, even what my God said — I made mistakes, and thus, I was not a perfect worker, and thus, I was not enough.

In my freshman year, I had a roommate who went to counseling sessions. He would always encourage me to go, too. I didn’t, because 1) I didn’t think I needed it, and 2) this roommate was becoming more and more dislikable, and I didn’t want to turn out like him. Since I wouldn’t go, he decided it would be in my best interest to take on the responsibility of being my counselor. He would tell me of my shortcomings: “You’re not ready for a relationship because you get anxious …” “You make jokes that go too far …” “You need to work on X …” “Your life isn’t going right because you made X decisions.”

All these Xs. All these things I needed to do better. Then, once fixed, I would be enough, and I could have the things I wanted: peace, a relationship, a job I liked, joy … (Reflecting on it now, it’s a wonder I didn’t hear Joel Osteen whispering sweet nothings into my ear.)

My roommate knew me better than I knew myself, apparently, so he felt the need to tell me about all that I was doing wrong in my life. And even though his character made me dislike the idea of counseling, his words still clung to my heart; they were partially true, after all: You are anxious; you do make jokes that go too far; you should work on X first.

Could you believe that these thoughts made me feel terrible about myself? I was not enough to be myself — yet. But I could get there. I just had to do more, and I had to do it right this time. Since my roommate had been to counseling before, I assumed this was how counselors worked: They told you what was wrong with you, you tried to fix it each week, you gave them a progress report, and they told you to “keep getting better.”

If this was the advice a counselor would give me, I felt it unnecessary, since I had others who were already more than willing to notify me of my failures.

***

The only memory that flashes in my head from my entire third grade is the particular shade of blue from my Saxon Math 3 workbook. I was struggling to complete a timed math fact sheet. I tried hard, and my mind raced for the answers …

Then, the timer ran out before I could finish.

I put my pencil down.

I had failed.

My mom got really mad. She chucked the blue workbook across the room, the binding ripped, and the cover flew off. I was scared. I was disappointed.

Why can’t you do better?

~

My mom liked to give me and my sister treats after we did well with something academically, like getting a good grade on a big test or finishing out the school year. She’d hand us an ice cream cone and say, “This isn’t because of how well you did, but because I love you.” I don’t remember her giving me any ice cream cones on one of my average or bad days.

She started me taking the PSAT — a high school junior’s test — in eighth grade. My first score was fine, because I had years to improve. The next year’s wasn’t much better, and the year after that wasn’t too great either. I studied harder and harder, took more practice tests, worked to achieve the score that was enough. All this would be worth it when I’d hit junior year.

A lot rode on this test. A free ride through college for the National Merit finalists, at least free tuition for the semifinalists. (I was aiming for the highest score, but if I happened to just get semifinalist, I could live with that.)

After I took my final PSAT in 2020, I came home, exhausted, disappointed.

“How do you think you did?” my mom asked me as I leaned against the kitchen counter.

I shook my head. “I definitely did worse than the last one.”

Silence. Then,

“Were you even trying on this one?”

***

“The Madonna and Child with St John and Angels” (Unfinished), by Michelangelo

There was a girl I was interested in a while back. At first, I avoided liking her, because I thought that I was too young for her. (She was a year behind in her college studies, and I was two years ahead.) But she started hanging out with me more at the office — we both worked for the student newspaper — and we started to talk about deeper things, and we studied off campus together, and (from the entire office’s perspective) it started to seem like she actually liked me. She clearly thought I was mature, so I started thinking that, too. Ok, well maybe there’s a chance here. Maybe she wouldn’t care that you’re younger. Heck, you’re even graduating before she is, so you’re kinda in the same boat of life. After that and a few months of psyching myself up, thinking by now that my chance of success was in the high 90s, I asked her out on a date.

She said she couldn’t get over the age gap. Nothing wrong with me, she said. Just my age.

You are a failure, even in the things over which you have no control.

You should have held to what you knew.

You are a little kid.

~

I held onto those thoughts for a while. In fact, I couldn’t get them out of my head. Perfection — who I strived to be — had been cut to the core. Here I was, as perfect as I could be. But I still wasn’t enough, all because of something that was fully out of my control — an unchangeable fact.

***

One of my sister’s old classmates committed suicide in December of 2023. Everyone was grieving, yearning for answers, groping in the darkness for some kind of relief. I only remember feeling jealous. Then angry at myself for feeling that way. I couldn’t even grieve. I was numb, apathetic. This depressed me immeasurably.

A couple months later, I was taking a walk around aimlessly, just thinking, and I found myself on the top of a parking garage, peering out at the night’s horizon. At that moment, I felt as if could remember every failure — every unsuccessful relationship, every mistake in the academic, every screw-up at a job — all at once. I looked down to the grassy ground below. It was a long way down. Long enough.

I felt the wind rippling my clothes and blowing back my hair.

I was tumbling, plummeting.

It felt ok.

~

Something about that image — its impulsivity, maybe — pierced through every mental defense I had. I panicked: Perfection was going to kill me.

~

I started going to counseling out of this fear. I didn’t expect much from going. But it couldn’t hurt to try.

I don’t quite remember everything that we talked about throughout those sessions. But counseling was one of the only places I felt I could go to be fully honest with both myself and others. It helped a lot: My suicidal thoughts subsided, and fewer depressing thoughts surfaced as I began to understand that my trying to be perfect was the main source for my depression and anxiety.

I learned a lot at counseling. I learned breathing and thinking techniques to combat restlessness and anxiety; I learned how to be grateful for what the Lord has protected me from; I learned that I have a really hard time taking compliments; I learned that my relationship with my mom has been a big reason for why I strive to be perfect.

~

My mom has cerebral palsy, a muscular disability that affects proper tension and balance. It mostly affects her legs — she walks with a bit of a limp — but it causes muscular tension throughout other parts of her body, too. Her hand muscles are tight. Her eyes wander from straight, forward vision, causing a lack of depth perception.

She was the first handicapped student to be mainstreamed into her local elementary school in 1978. Other students didn’t receive her well. They thought, based on the outside issues, that there was something up inside, too — that she was incompetent, slow, retarded. Cerebral palsy, in most cases, does not affect mental processing or function. It definitely doesn’t affect my mom in this way at all.

Her dad knew this, and he would always ensure that she would work harder academically so that people wouldn’t discount her because of her disability. That was his philosophy: Excel in all other areas in life so that this one area of physical mobility won’t cause that much of a disadvantage. This mindset was drilled into my mother from a very young age.

You must live up to your potential, because your abilities will be questioned and mocked.

Even after most of the bullying subsided — after the questioning and mocking — she remained anxious about the unknowns of the school day throughout middle and high school. She’d throw up in the mornings, every day. It became a habit for her, and she, too, was unsure of the reason.

~

This week I asked my mom about a few of the things that I’ve struggled with understanding: Why did she put so much pressure on me to succeed academically? What underlying fears did she have about raising me or homeschooling me? What has “perfection” meant to her?

She told me that I started reading when I was two years old, which is apparently a pretty impressive feat. (I wouldn’t have known at the time, but my mom was definitely impressed.) As I grew and got smarter faster, she became worried that she wouldn’t be able to teach me everything I needed to live up to my potential.

Homeschooling was not very popular in the 2000s. At the time, there was a lot of societal pressure to put your kids in public schools, because they wouldn’t have the same opportunities or social skills if they remained homeschooled. (I have been around many homeschooling families, and this idea certainly holds merit. Some homeschoolers really don’t get out much.)

She didn’t want to teach me and my sister through high school. She wanted to send us to a public or private school. Her extended family also pressured her into thinking we may not be able to succeed in college and beyond if we remained homeschooled. But, she told me, the Lord called her to continue.

It was then that my mom doubled down on education. More of our vacations turned into educational field trips. We were enrolled in a more rigorous, classical homeschool education. We did dual enrollments, CLEP exams, standardized testing — anything that could quantify our knowledge and our academic potential. Mom wanted to make sure we would have every academic opportunity available to us so that we could do anything we wanted once we left the nest.

Even after all of that, a part of her still dreaded keeping us homeschooled through high school, because she would have to be the teacher. She couldn’t be competent, inspiring, or good enough to get us to the diploma; she couldn’t give us the best education.

But she persevered throughout high school, shifting the weight of our academic futures onto her shoulders, onto her ability to teach and motivate. She was tired of being the teacher; she desperately wished to cast off this weight and just be Mom.

Instead, the weight just increased. Mom constantly feared it.

~

I think, given the impact of generational ideas and transfer, that my mom’s fear of inadequacy can be traced back to when she was a kid. She put a lot into working harder to make her dad proud.

I think, in a similar way, I put a lot into working harder to make sure I stayed loved.

After all, the ice cream cones weren’t going to hand themselves out.

My counselor recommended I visit a psychiatrist to see about treatments for my mental issues, so this summer I went to see one. He asked me if I drank, smoked, did drugs, all that. I said no, no, no, and he just replied, “Man, you’re boring.” It was true: I was boring. There were no external factors that made my brain wonky, and yet I still had something bad going on in there.

The psychiatrist served me a diagnosis. This tasty little dish comes with sides of anxiety and depression and pairs nicely with a glass of stress: OCD.

This diagnosis explains why I’ve had obsessive thoughts about my mistakes in my job or relationships or academics. It explains why I have compulsions to look over an email around ten times before I send it to ensure it is perfect grammatically and organizationally. It explains why I used to vomit before every work day. It explains why I have such trouble with writing.

I find myself constantly needing to ensure that things are right, that they are accurate, that they are perfect, and if they aren’t, an inconsistency will cause something bad or unknown to happen (like the Chipotle Elf — he might come back).

It’s irrational and stupid to obsess and compel over anything in life, and yet, it’s the way that my mind likes to cope with imperfection.

***

When I was on the phone with my mom this week, she told me that she was proud of me. This time, I believed it. I used to believe that she based her pride and love for me on quantifiable things, like academics. I know now that’s not the case.

~

What have I done wrong in this essay? Probably a lot.

Maybe it’s too long. Maybe it didn’t get to the “heart” of the issue. Maybe I didn’t portray people lovingly enough. Maybe I didn’t include enough of the redemption in my life, the saving grace that guides me further away from depression and anxiety. Maybe I don’t have the full picture yet.

Writers are constantly told to write what they know. This knowledge is supposed to be concrete enough that they can use it anytime they wish to put pen to paper. Without a solid foundation of information, how are they to function? Writers have to know enough in order to write what they know.

I hear Perfection’s nagging voice: “Well, what do you know?”

For my entire life, I have attributed much of my worth and the feeling of being loved to the quality of my accomplishments. The better I do and the more I know, the better and more I’m loved. I know this is a wrong, twisted view of myself. Yet, even though I have this knowledge, Perfection doesn’t want to just pack up its carpetbag and hop on a train to find someone else to pester.

~

I am in the back alley. The fists are flying. Perfection sits on a trash can beside me, swinging its legs and egging on the fight — poking, prodding, jeering, yelling.

Then I hear a voice. It is certainly not Perfection’s. This voice whispers to me, beckons to me. It is ready to hear my thoughts, my struggles, my honesties without a single interruption. When I actually stop to listen, it asks me,

Well, what do you know?