Perfectionism

Last night I went to an emotional healing course. The topic was Perfectionism. The instructor explained about overt and covert perfectionism and their manifestations.

As she was explaining it, I was able to put some very important pieces together about how perfectionism has impact my life, but also our society around us. 

Overt perfectionists need to have control over everything -- their environment, how their outfit looks, how they present themselves to the public, having their dishes be spotless, having to present themselves as something acceptable and presentable to the world. Perfect in everything.  It is exhausting.  It is often because there is so much shame that the perfectionist is carrying from the family background that they need to feel in control of something, instead of feeling the pain and releasing it.

I could reflect and see how this was the case with my mother and stepfather, both coming from quite different backgrounds but also with an upper class aspect to it. 

My mother needs to be constantly busy, incessantly cleaning, shopping, making to do lists, worrying about other people's problems, decorating the house, painting. And it's never good enough. 

As a child, I took all of it personally. That I was somehow a slob, and why bother even trying. I would just crumble into a state of helplessness and lose touch with anything I would want to do for myself.  It was futile.  Until one day I decided that I indeed wanted to learn how to do art and painting.  I loved studying art, the conversations with my mom at the art gallery, and experiencing and seeing life through artistic eyes. So I signed up for an art class, thinking I wouldn't do that well in it. When it turned out to be the opposite. The teacher said I was a natural! I ended up taking classes in Mexico and then having an art exhibition in a cafe! If I listened to my mom's perfectionism, I never would have done it. What I realized was that I wanted to be an expressive artist and that required to let go of needing to do it perfectly.

I carried a lot of grudges against my mom, thinking that I could never live up to her standards.  I felt like her side of the family -- successful professionals with an enviable last name --had it all figured out and I was the poor cousin who could never do anything right. I was destined to be always the broken one, the one that everyone thought would amount to nothing. And according to their high standards and beliefs, they were right. But I didn't want to be like them anyways. The rigid rules, the amount of energy and money that went into maintaining the image, were all stifling. 

Now my stepfather, I somehow had more mercy on him. He was a Jamaican man who was lighter-skinned. He needed to keep the appearances up to become more white than black. Because being black was considered to be dangerous, low class and a life of being segregated.  In a country with extreme poverty, a person will do whatever takes to not have to experience the pain, violence, ostracization and fear of living close to the streets. So he had to keep up the appearances of being white-cultured, using proper manners and achieving excellence to the point of negating his own spirit.  He became OCD and suffered severe anxiety issues.  His perfectionism was very linked with the racism and oppression of his time. So I really couldn't fault him for it.


But it had huge implications as he would be terrified if I went outside of the box of thinking and feeling. Dating a black man was considered to be horrific in his eyes. It's exactly what he was running away from. Also, he wouldn't hug or touch my mom when she was sick, banishing her to the other room. As a child, it felt cold, cruel, and completely uncompassionate.  There was no soul in his neuroses and I suffered from not receiving healthy love and affection in the home.


So both my mother and stepfather were overt perfectionists and they would mock my father because he didn't amount to anything. But what I discovered last night was that my father is a covert perfectionist -- the underachiever, the one who overthinks and gives up before he tries, believing that if he can't make the million bucks, why bother. He also has the illness of feeling ashamed of his background and needs to put up facades in order to fit in.  He would look like a million bucks when he walked out the door, trying hard to become what I believed himself to be. Unfortunately, my dad never made it. He gravitated towards get-rich-quick schemes and gambling. Perhaps this was in his heart and soul, but what he loved the most were the horses and talking to people. He lost touch with his feelings and what his soul cherishes, and instead focused on trying to attain something out of approval.  My grandmother planted this in him, as she was money-hungry. It comes from a background of being poor and the shame that goes along with that.  Ironically, my father's brother, my Uncle Kent, became wildly successful and made it to being a millionaire. But he was an overt perfectionist -- someone who always needs to compete and achieve.

They needed to put on the mask of wealth, just like my stepfather and mother, in order to be accepted within the wealthy culture, even though it was killing their true selves. Now I'm not saying you can't attain wealth, but so long as it's not at the cost of personal happiness, decency towards self and others, or blocking the flow of life, love and creativity.  We need to know it's coming from the right place, rather than from the place of needing approval and acceptance externally.

Now, it's my work to look at how these perfectionists and the perfectionism in the world around us is blocking my truth. What would I do differently? Would I actually put my heart and soul into writing? Would I go to yoga more often? Would I go easy on myself even if I can't pay the bills? Would I continue to offer services to my clients in a way that truly supports them, rather than having to meet the need of perceived high standards?

All these things need to be considered in my life so I can truly free myself from perfectionism's grip....

Time's Smoky Trail

The wiff of a bold smell

Whirls me back to younger days

filled with 

crisis, torment and homesickness

where smoke burned

more valiant and bold,

unapologetic to

a nation’s survivalist nature

that singes toxins in the air

Instead of hiding them

in landfill dumpsters

This part of my brain

opens up gateways 

of a soothing knowing,

telling me

I’ve been carried

along this trajectory of time,

relatively unscathed,

among dialogues and circumstances
with people

I no longer know,

remember or

prefer not to have known.

I can’t escape

Time’s eternal reminders 

when they show up

uninvited

on a late summer’s day walk.

The Perfect Hike

Tiny-flowered green moss

soften the faces of cold stones

from a short but fierce winter.

the pathetically rare brilliance of a forest floor

weave mini-streams of microscopial civilizations—

these worlds we’re momentarily yet monstrously invading

there you are

in an orange cotton shirt

popping through the dullness of other people’s shadows.

A perfectly-designed outfit with a matching hat,

covering your delicate, green eyes.

Your water bottle--a new kind of unleaching plastic,

in fashion for avid hikers.

Your distant stare reaches through the fingertips of the trees

Reminding me of when we were younger

(but my footsteps were smaller than yours then)

and you’d look out over the sea with a yearning concern.

Pondering the fears of eternity,

in between wafts of sand and coconut oil suntan lotion,

you’d tell tales of magical lands

stretching as far as the eye could see.

Here in this forest

where humans have not been invited

we walk orderly on the path of hiking trails,

I cringe that we stomp on ferns whose heads have not yet awakened
just to keep up with the pace of the crowd.

Arriving at the end of the lot,
social niceties are shared,

we return to the car where you seem to celebrate the fact

that the world is properly designed

by straight roads with property divisions.

and I wonder

when did you lose your free spirit?

Elephant Wishes

“Hey, Annie, listen to this,” Louisa said quietly from the bottom bunk, her flashlight hanging over her shoulder, shining on the book titled Animal Totems of Native North Americans.

The elephant is considered to be one of the most loyal animals, grieving the loss of loved ones in a more honouring way than even humans. Anyone who has this as a totem is known to be strong, wise, compassionate but is only as loyal as the level of integrity of the person they are walking beside. They can tell when there is someone who is harmful or dangerous and will seek out revenge should there be far too many transgressions.

“Aren’t elephants cool, Annie?”

Annie could feel Louisa’s mind drift out through the walls.  She’d say that this was her real family, this family of elephants, who would come and visit her at night.  Annie heard Louisa muffle her sobs into the pillow, consoling herself because nobody else would, asking for the elephants to take the pain away. She said that the elephants told her that she just had to go to the right place at the right time in the forest and they would come to get her and make everything all better.   This was Louisa’s mission most of the time when they went outside to play.  And she would get lost every time.

Louisa made Annie swear to secrecy that she wouldn’t tell their parents, or else the elephants would never come and get her, leaving her behind in this horrible, horrible place with this family that didn’t love her.  

One day in summer, Louisa went to play in the stream across the road from the trailer park where they were staying.  Louisa tiptoed on the stone rocks freckled with a pinky rose jaggedy design, gently imprinting her footprint on each step like a little girl is told she’s supposed to do. 

Her sister, Annie, fumbled along behind her, almost falling in yet-to-be discovered new worlds of moss and pointy-shelled creatures. Every step she took, she’d say sorry to the stones thinking that she was hurting them, picking up the ones that would roll over out of the cradle of the mud bed they were sleeping in and soothing them with a stroke of “there there”s.

“Look, Louisa!” Annie pointed up to the sky. “It’s an effelant, your favourite aminal.”

“El-eeee-fffffant, Annie,” Louisa said, frustrated by her younger sister’s constant interference while she counted her delicate steps to the other side of the creek, smiling up at the clouds.

“9, 10, 11…”

Annie dipped her toes into the ice cold water, the stream flowing gently over her powder-white toes,  her flip flop nearly slipping out from under her foot, twisting around her toes.   

“Louisa?...where are you?”

Louisa was no longer counting. She wasn’t even in the water.

“Louisa?...” Annie quivered.  “Where are you?  This isn’t funny, Louisa…don’t do this to me, again…”

The wind swooshed through the trees calmly.  The river gurgled and murmured behind her with a soothing dependability.   The stones lay embedded in the earth as they’ve done for centuries.  Everything was the same, yet everything screamed…”Louisa’s gone”.

Annie’s shoulders tensed up with the mix of panic and anger.  She felt colder, more fragile, wispy and utterly alone amongst pine trees that didn’t seem to care about whether Annie had lost her sister for good this time.   

“Louisa, get out here. I’m gonna tell mom on you if you don’t come out here right now! I mean it this time!”

Still no Louisa.

Annie hopped onto every other stone and went back to get her mom, just like her mom said to do if anything bad happened.

“Lord, why did you have to give me such a sick and crazy child?” their mother would repeat over and over again, then blaming it on a curse that someone put on the family line by a distant aunt 4 generations ago.

Today felt different. Annie’s knees shook and her upper chest was cold with grief.  There’s a vacancy. A hopelessness. A sense in her little belly that there is no chance of ever seeing Louisa again.

“Mom. I think Louisa weelly is gone dis time,” Annie whimpered, her lips folding inward, trying not to cry. Mom didn’t like it when Annie cried and would always tell her to stop it before she embarrassed herself.   

Annie never felt embarrassed when she cried. She just felt afraid that mom would smack her across the head. Or tell her she couldn’t eat dinner.

“By now, Annie, I’ve really stopped caring. That child’s got what’s coming to her.”

Annie looked down to the ground, her eyes welling and puffing up in pockets the size of fairies’ purses.  

“How dare she leave me behind,” she thought, the sadness turning to angry knots twisting over her brow.

Mom took the frying pan from the stove that was caked in leftover egg from yesterday and took the metal scratchy thing and scrubbed and scrubbed. 

“That little bitch is gonna make me look bad,” mom cursed into the greasy water.

Annie sat out on the front step looking up at the clouds, hoping to see Louisa up there, waving at her with the elephants. But the sky was clear blue, just as empty as it felt over by the forest and stream.

“I hate elephants,” Annie fermented into her heart.

A Lost Argument

The house was in a void of unusual silence. Is this what peace was supposed to be like? A funeral parlour of lost arguments? The clock on the kitchen stove flashes 12:00 in lime green. The power must have gone out last night after I left – when I told him that this would be the last time I'd ever see him.

The living room smells of fresh faux leather from the newly bought couch that was to be a celebration piece of the life we were building on hard-earned money. All for what now?

Perhaps he’ll come back again this time.  He never recedes so easily on an argument like this. Oh, yes, he’ll be back.

  

The laundry basket filled with clean clothes rests by the T.V.  His white and blue jockey underwear lay casually on top, waiting to be folded and put away. The dark blue woolen work socks are strewn amongst the white undershirts, lost by themselves, their mates floating on the other side of the hamper tangled in some other mess of linens. Someone has to intervene for them to find each other again. 

It all seemed so sudden. This absence. This final decision. Even though threats of leaving were made time and again. There were far too many reasons we had to stay, including bills with co-signed names and neighbourly expectations for perceptions of manufactured happiness.  

The sun washes the wood panel floors of the dining room, wiping away passionate tensions into a sea of nothingness – as if it all didn’t matter. None of it. The fighting, the kissing, the making up then back to the fighting. It all floated up with the dust particles of another day where the sun rises and sets, where people are born and then die, where life just simply goes on regardless of who you are or what you have and haven’t done.

My hand presses onto the floor, tears floating down my cheeks, reminding me I’m real. Or at least something is real.

The ice cube machine in the freezer clunks out chunks into the metal tray, breaking open the panic of superficial meaninglessness in the house.   

The whirring sound of the garage door reverberates through the drywall. Perhaps he’s home; perhaps he really has returned.  But it’s too muffled  – it’s the neighbours taking the kids to school. 

Life has faltered.  Dreams built randomly from reactionary desires are falling away with nothing there to catch them. 

The empty bottle of white wine sits  upright boldly on the counter. He rarely drinks wine. He must have finished it off before he left, the tragedy of wasted time and energy swirling in his mind.  Just like how his mother left in a state of ruin when he was 4, leaving him sitting there, stunned of how we was to become someone from that point on.   

Birds chip in the feeder outside, celebrating a new day of safety and nourishment for them. Everyone said we should just break up for the greater good.  Even the birds seem happier without us being together.  

But no note. Not even a goodbye. Not even a thank you or a retaliatory statement. Just the looming silence of indifference that death’s presence lingers between two people who are still breathing the madness of a final and lost argument.