Day Three: Something You Have to Forgive Yourself For

zoinks

Every single day, I mentally beat myself up because I haven't lived up to my own ridiculous standards.  And look, you guys, I am bad at a lot of stuff.  A LOT. OF STUFF. 

But those are things I don't care about, like math, or not getting lost, or keeping a pristine house.  When it comes to things I DO care about, it's a completely different story.

I have a compulsive need to be the best at those things:  the most creative, the most intelligent, the most amusing, the most the most the most, the best the best the best. 

Imagine what it feels like to live under that self-imposed pressure.  It sucks, is what it feels like.  To measure myself against my own expectations and to come up short EVERY SINGLE TIME, to disappoint myself on a daily basis ...  those are things that drive people into CrazyTown.

I'm constantly beating myself up for not being BETTER, even though I know, empirically, that it's measurement that can't be classified, and the line between MEDIOCRE and BETTER is always moving in whatever direction is furthest away from me, which means I can never ever get there.  This is what the rational part of my head tells me. 

Only thing is, the non-rational part of my head doesn't really care about the practicality of attainability.  The non-rational part of my head thinks I'm a dumbass who doesn't try hard enough.  The non-rational part of my head thinks I should want it more.  The non-rational part of my head picks apart every movement, every decision, and explains to me exactly where I went wrong, and what I should have done, and how things could have turned out differently if only I weren't so stupid or selfish or blind.

It would be one thing if I compared myself to other people and came up short.*  It is an entirely different thing to compare myself to a statistically impossible Mei Flower, to look at the gulf that divides us and know that it will never shrink, ever. 

I think it's worse, too, because these expectations are solely mine.  Nobody's pressuring me, or putting demands on me, or judging me.   EVERYBODY ACCEPTS MY IMPERFECTION BUT ME.

This explains why I'm so angry all the time.



*This never happens.

I've just realized that this seems like it would cancel out my previous post.  But, for some weird reason, it doesn't ... to me.  Both of these people exist: Amazing Awesome Mei Flower is just as alive as Emo Imperfect Mei Flower.  I don't know how that works, exactly, but it does ... for me.  I am weird psychologically unquantifiable.