Perfection

I crave perfection. It was never a secret that I was a bit of a perfectionist. It is, however, something I've been meaning to let go of, at least a little.

I mean...I used to tear out my notebook page if I so much as crossed out a word. No white-out for me. You can see white-out.

It still drives me bat shit to see a crossed out work or my handwriting slightly imperfect. I'm still learning to live with it but at least I don't tear the pages out anymore.

Today I did something stupid. Without getting into specifics, I had a lapse in judgement and did something I should have done differently. I wrote in my journal and still had a need to write in here afterwards. So here I am, despite not posting all year long.

I realized that my mistake is such a big deal to me because the perception of my perfection has been broken. Someone saw my error and I felt judged for/by it. I can't let it go and I can't stop thinking about it. It's happened before and it will likely happen again. This time, however, as it has been lately, I took time to sit there and really think back and try to find where it all stemmed from.

My parents always told me I was smart and that I learned things quickly. This, for the most part is true. I was raised to believe that I was capable of getting perfect grades (and I may or may not be) and anything less than those perfect grades was not acceptable. AKA I was never acceptable. LOL

No, but really, I was never able to be perfect in that aspect, but I was able to be perfect in other aspects. And maybe I strive for perfection in all those other places to make up for those imperfect grades and I never gave it up. Grades and school were really all I knew as a kid. My parents' world pretty much focused on school.

I knew there were areas where I couldn't perfect myself so I put them aside on focused on other things.

My ADHD kicked in and derailed my train of thought so I'm going to conclude this without the verbose verbage.

I want to learn to let go.
I want to learn to accept my imperfections rather than mask them.
I want to really understand this need for perfection, not just my speculations.

Well, really all I want is to be perfect but since I know I can't have that I guess I'll have to work on those.