Perfectionism

Let me give you a little insight into what is behind not just myself but the many who make out in every moment that things are funny or fine or fabulous or forgotten about feasible. It’s called the expression of an Eccedentesiast.

Propped up behind those pupils is a perfectionist. A precision is pointing out penned in diktats for my every expression and each event I endeavor.  Behind the pretty palette, a not so pinkish perception can be present. This faultfinder for my every eff up. This pigment of perfectionism which paints out and plans the to-dos of today and tomorrow down to a T. This teller offer which tallies every wrong turn I take and every edge I need to etch away or touch up. Turning the brush into a broom in my brain, belittling and brandishing away what is be-speckled on the flaw-filled floor of my face and thoughts. A written in stone not quite rightness never not there to some small smidge or whit of width.

Perfectionism pervades my perception at some point each day. It might be in the mirror. Or in my sight of a situation. Perhaps it’s of other people. Or it may tinge the way I witness the world and what's transpiring wherever I am. But beneath the brushes of color, there is a cake hole with a capacity to cut slices of my “stuff ups” for my mind to munch on. A capability for this carving into and carping about my characteristics and how I carry things out. A persnickety commentator shit stirring the quibbling and quarreling of every concept. Under fluttering, eyelashes can be uttering undermining each etch exposed on the exterior. Ahead hum-drumming with color-coded hues of how to do this and how I should do that. A chunterer is chastising my cheeks or the chattering they’ve done over chores. This pettifogger pronouncing it’s prescripts.  Poking its pencil nib notions out of my pores and pronouncing to me to look better, do things faster, outmatch myself more and more, do everything efficaciously, stop this, stop that, do this then and this there and the deadline of this day must do that...

But what I want to say is that’s okay. Because what I now know is that this beautiful world is crammed with contrasts. My skin is speckled with scars, and I have scuffs to my soles and soul. But I also have kisses from the sun in each faint freckle on my face. I get breakouts, and I have breakdowns and burnouts. But I also have breakthroughs and brandishing bursts of energy and beautiful friends who love me despite the “bad.”

Sometimes my days are filled with wrong whims and the weird happenings, little troubles, and tumbling hearts, writers' block and wanting to be anywhere but where I am. And then other days buzz with barefoot childishness and belly aching laughter, not caring about the clock, losing myself in song lyrics and loving all the little things I let slip through frantic fingertips when in the claws of the turbulent commotions. ••I have stretch marks scrawled on my skin from the weight gain. I have writers' block and wade in wrongdoings even when I know what is right. I constantly critique anything I create and scrunch up sheet after sheet. But my face also crumples and creases with carefree laughter when I let go. And for the sake of a few stretches marks most days I’d say and mean that my body is not worth berating for the beautiful things its both brought and brings me through.

Sometimes what comes and goes is chaotic. I have manic depressive moments which more often than not mold into the next minutes. Spicy sweet and plain in one spoonful of a second and flavors of freedom and then blandness between just one bite. Bottomless joy in one outing and lost in endless hopelessness another. Surprises both breaking and bedazzling lurking around each corner, fuses of fragrant love and wilting flowers or simultaneously the scent of vice versa. ••Some days I see the humor in the harangues and hilarity in hindsight and then others I still hear my heart hung up on it with the headaches. Shifting from shackled with shame in one shot and then shining eyes the next.

I have blooming red blemishes which burgeon on my skin and stand out. But on the better days, I can blur them out of my brain and believe these marks are menial in comparison to the mark I want to make on the world. Sometimes I tell myself I’m taking up too much space and then sometimes it takes all but ten minutes to talk myself out of it and believe that the bitch of my brain is bull shitting for the billionth time.••Sometimes I smudge my makeup maybe six or seven times and restart it over and over again before I let myself leave my room. Some days I hate myself. Some days I don’t want the world to see me. Some days I get sick of doing the same things I smiled so dinkum about the day before. But some days I drink the rain and dance down the street in it. Most days there is both shame in the shortfalls and shimmering self-confidence in the shine.•• I have irreversible brittle bones from trying to change my body and brain and only ending up as a monkeyfied monstrosity of myself with a monster in my mind. But I walk without weakness in those bones now and with the energy to be extravagant and expressive and eff what anything thinks.  

I cry a lot. And then sometimes I can’t cry at all even when I try to tear up. But there are sincere smiles amongst the stark tears too. I have anxiety attacks and a hell of a lot of anger about people from my past. And I’m not afraid to articulate this anymore. Because I’m human. Because at the same time there’s so much in my life that I love, and so much that makes me say I am living not just breathing.

Somedays I try to makeover my whole mind's eye and do you know what some days it all works like a work of art and I’m in alignment as fu**.

And then others it’s back to blotchy beginnings that my brain loves bitching about.And all along I’ve been told that the best thing to be is yourself while all along I didn’t know how to do it. Until I realized there’s no punctiliously picked or PERFECT procedure. No pedantic patterns to map me there.When it happens to me, it just seems to happen. No miracle or magic making. Like I’m trying yet not trying. As the time is tick-tocking but no hands are holding me down, and no time catcalling the clockwork commands I must comply with to get it “right.” And I guess that’s the art and beauty of letting go.