Perfectionism. Meh.

October 2008

I’m at my most controlling when I feel most broken. When I feel dark and demented, I’m driven and disciplined, sometimes to the point of self-destruction. I had a spoilt, self-involved (hot, bright) boyfriend when I was 20. He messed me around endlessly and broke my heart. I was pathetic and needy and ultimately found myself lying in fetal position on the bathroom floor, swearing that I would never allow this to happen again. He made me feel like my father did: unworthy, unloved, un-pretty.

And so I dieted and ran and weight-trained and dieted more, until my hip bones jutted out and my periods stopped and my mom cried all the time. (My father called me Miss Cellulite, which didn’t help me out much) I remember the high it gave me; the sad sense of pseudo-superiority as I watched everybody else indulge, whilst I drank Diet Something, smoked cigarettes, chose cardio over lectures and promised myself that I would always be The Boss of me.

I know a girl like that. She reminds me of me then, but she’s 30 now and she still hasn’t let up. Her hair is always perfectly flat-ironed and her Sevens barely grip her Pilates-thighs. Her life is seemingly in perfect balance: a career that is loving and that she’s good at; creative outlets for her many talents; grilled white fish and a salad with no dressing. There is a part of me that envies her: her discipline, her skinny arse, her apparently ideal life. But I always feel like I’m looking at her through glass. Like I can’t truly engage with her, because to engage, you have to be cognizant of the dark, the vulnerable, the demented, the desperate. And she has done such an impeccable job of repressing all that.

Therapy has helped me to integrate. Not that the dark wasn’t there before. It’s there in most of us, I think. But Type A’s are masters of repression. We mentally file things as Acceptable or Unacceptable and then we work harder than anybody else trying to squash the Unacceptable; that which we don’t believe serves our purpose. I thought that side of myself was rotten and toxic and needed to be disciplined into submission.

Which is of course, bull.

There are bits and pieces of me that are totally crap. Bits that are shameful and pieces that are peculiar, and not in a cool way. And I’ve almost learnt to love those bits. When I lose track of this and get too stuck in ‘bettering myself’, I remind myself of the people that I love most in the world: they are complex and flawed and imperfect and it makes them so much more real and magnetic to me than my flat-ironed friend.

I have an old dear friend named Daniel. It would take me a library to wordsmith all of his brilliance, but what I love about him most of all are his flaws; his quirks; the fact that while he is always exquisite in everything he does, in some ways, he doesn’t seem to have his shit together. And I love that. At 32 years old, he never leaves his flat without this scruffy backpack and a very 80’s Velcro wallet. He wears pants that seem to be 3 sizes too big for his lanky frame and despite his beautiful mind, he always looks like he has no idea what he is doing or where he is going. And I love love love that about him. It’s what makes him perfect to me.

So fuck the flat iron. That’s what I say.

Life’s too short and apparently perfect people are either totally boring, heavily medicated or on the verge of mental collapse.

Trust me. I’ve been there.