Are You Perfect?

I was driving home with my boy today when a strange question popped into my mind, a question that I think has been percolating just beneath the surface of my gray matter for years. I asked it of him and now I'm asking it of you: What do you imagine is the difference between being a perfectionist and trying to be perfect? Do you think there is one?

I do.

For most of my life people have been telling me that I'm such a terrible perfectionist. (Side note: that's such a strange phrase, "terrible perfectionist." Does it mean that one sucks at her perfectionism? Or, does it mean that being a perfectionist is terrible? Or both? End note.) Anyhow, people have been telling me that I'm this terrible perfectionist. My response has always been to look at these people askance. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a perfectionist.

What I am is a mess. An utter, fallible, complete and total mess. I can barely get my socks to match everyday.

At the same time, nonetheless, I am trying to keep this world, my world, from falling apart. And in this respect, I am trying so very hard to be perfect. I am clenched and tightened and holding my breath. I want so badly for everyone to be OK and so, if you need for me to do it so that you can be OK, I will do it. If you don't know what it is, I will set to finding it out. I will worry and I will weary and I will try. I will keep on going and I will never mind because I will never notice. Just you don't fall apart.

I will be perfect if you will promise to be OK. I will keep this all together.

I imagine you sitting there, reading this, eyes bugging out, especially those of you who know exactly who I am, even as I poorly mask my identity, thinking, whoa. This is not good.

And it's not. If we were sitting here together I'd make a wry, pithy joke and try to let us off the hook. But here's the thing: I think maybe I'm just extreme in my trying to be perfect. We're all trying to control this life, this shit. We're all trying to find a way to know that it's all just Chicken Little, so even though it might seem like the sky is falling, and even though all the evidence points in the direction that the sky is in fact falling, it's just a big trick and everything is really OK.

My method is trying really hard not to make any sudden moves, taking responsibility for things that never were mine to own in the first place, and all the while trying to be chill, an act that nobody buys because I'm wound as tight as a new mattress from Sears. Other folks got their ways -- and this laundry list is too long rehearsed. Shopping. Drinking. Eating. Whatever. I judge ye not.

I'm just saying to you this: the sky is falling. I don't know how fast. If it seems like you can't get that corner straight, I'm guessing you can't. I'm sorry it hurts. And I'm going to pass on what my boy said to me.

He said, "You try to be perfect because you want to feel safe." That's right.

It's hard to feel safe when the sky is falling. Keep breathing. I don't know much, but I know that helps. And I'm learning, day by day, that somehow in the midst of too damn much, we're finding a way to be OK.