I’m a “perfectionist.” When I say that I don’t mean I think I’m perfect. Actually, I feel far from it. Perfectionism, for me, means that I set unreasonably high expectations for myself, mostly with regard to my character and/or my ability to achieve; expectations that are nearly impossible to reach or maintain. Inevitably, when I don’t reach these expectations, I’m left feeling less than (which is pretty much always). I have a tremendously difficult time showing myself the grace, compassion, and forgiveness that I would to others. Essentially, I have one a set of standards for the world, and then a completely separate set of standards for myself. Perfectionism leaves me in a constant state of feeling like I’m moments away from losing everything, like I’m never good enough. I am habitually and shamefully insecure.
Needless to say, this hasn’t served me well and prohibits me from being the person I want to be. I realize it is self-indulgent thinking, kind of ridiculous, and ultimately tends to paralyze me. There, of course, have been times when perfectionism has helped me. It has kept me aiming and reaching, trying to achieve. It is what made me a good student. Achieving things helped me to feel validated…but only momentarily.
Mostly though, perfectionism causes me to be self-destructive. “I’ll never be good enough so why even try?” The fear of failure is so huge for me. When I fail, I take it personally. I use it as ammunition to reinforce a false narrative that I’m just a piece-of-shit human being. I can trace my life into moments when I am leaning into my perfectionism acquiring validation from achievement and moments when I rebel against my perfectionism, give up, and stop trying all together. Very rarely am I peacefully floating in the middle; a beautiful realm where I try my best at something and risk failing at it.
I’ve had to reevaluate all this recently. Well, first I just evaluated it because, to be honest, I wasn’t aware that this was a pattern of thinking for me. I knew I was hyper critical of myself but I didn’t identify that my doing this was an attempt to preserve and protect myself. I was subconsciously “keeping myself in line” because the pain of feeling like a “fuck-up” was too risky.
Lately, I’ve been failing in a very big way. Potentially the biggest failure of my life. And it is so incredibly painful that I’ve felt that I might suffocate from my own self-hatred.
Every month, for the past 3.5 years, I take a test…and I fail that test. One fucking line with a stark white space where there should be a second. I can’t make sense of it. I torture myself about it. I feel terrible guilt about the debt I have put my husband and I in trying to fix it, and yet, failing to do so. I hate that I’m in a profession that esteems health while I’m simultaneously battling my own. I’m resentful of the judgment and pity I receive from others; the unwarranted advice from those who’ve never experienced infertility. It’s been a complete shame-fest of a nightmare and I desperately want to run away from it.
But…I’ve been forced to make peace with it (albeit kicking and screaming). I have been made to confront failure again, and again, and again, in a painfully laughable way. It is as if the universe is saying, “See. This isn’t killing you. This thing you are so scared of: failing…failing big. You’re doing it over and over again. And guess what? It doesn’t kill you! Stop being scared. This is where you become who you’re meant to be. Failure is how I am going to teach you.”
With failure as my teacher, I’ve been learning a lot about myself. I have learned that I can handle hard things; I can survive difficult circumstances. I’ve also learned that there is no amount of pain that makes you immune to more pain and you must endure the suffering of life in order to experience the beauty of life. And lastly, I’ve learned that I know how to pick myself up, again and again and that I’m more resilient than I thought I was.
Suffering is part of the human experience. I know there is suffering I haven’t yet faced which is an overwhelmingly difficult truth to bear. We can wallow in our pain (which I sure did and still do sometimes) but we can also use it as fuel to propel us towards gratitude and connection. My pain and my failure only make me more human. It levels me. It brings me back to earth.
Over the past year I have realized that everyone is waiting on something. Waiting for a solution to an unanswered question. Why did this or that happen? When will this or that happen? How will I make it through? What will it be like? It doesn’t matter whether the source of the question is infertility, death, divorce, infidelity, singleness, debt, unemployment, illness, addiction, bullying etc. There is humanness in the pain of wondering and waiting. We are connected, not because we can always identify ourselves in each other’s unique experiences, but because we know on a visceral level what suffering feels like.
So I have been thinking about ways in which I let the fear of failure run my life. I’ve been thinking about the bag of shame I carry and the contents I never expose. I’ve been thinking about how my unwillingness to be vulnerable keeps me from being my most authentic self and connecting to others in a real way.
It is an indelible truth that failure will not kill me. I learn this lesson again and again. And so I’ve been looking at the ways in which I have been avoiding failure. The truth is, I feel much more comfortable when I blend in, when I’m anonymous, when I’m unmemorable. It’s safe. But that’s the problem. I can’t possibly give to the world if I’m not showing up in it.
I thought I would start here. It is consistently on my heart to write (and share what I write) but I am quite the gopher when it comes to blogging. I’ll pop out every once in a while and share something vulnerable, get scared and climb back into the ground to hide. The fear is that no one will read it, that I will be judged, or that what I’m writing isn’t good or interesting enough. It’s a legitimate fear because all those things are likely to be true. But so what? I have been failing so big lately and still surviving. Why not try and fail at this too?
By doing this—doing something that is on my heart to do but knowing that there is a great potential I will not meet my own expectation—I will be in that beautiful middle ground. I will be defying the trappings of perfectionism. And by showing my scars and my pain…I will hopefully be able to connect to others who have wounds that need healing too.