It’s time for me to lay my perfection down. Things aren’t perfect. I am not perfect, and I just need to get used to that.
I am never going to be the perfect parent, the perfect wife, or the perfect room mother. My mediation skills, tediously negotiating the rocky field between sugar-amped and overtired kids, will never be anywhere approaching perfect. Nor will my patience.
I am never going to be the perfect massage therapist, the perfect writer, or the perfect photographer. There are techniques I will never perfect, never master. And some in which I won’t even become fully competent.
I will never be a perfect grammarian.
I am never going to stop putting two spaces after each period. I will never stop writing like I talk. Some habits are too ingrained to ever be perfected-out.
Heaven knows I will never be the perfect friend. I am at times too selfish, at times too depressed, at times to introverted, and at times too pissed at the world. And at times too just plain tired.
I will never stop wondering if I can slip a nip of Jack in the empty space at the top of my Coke bottle unnoticed, though I will probably never actually try. I will never love doing laundry or talking on the phone. I will never tire of watching bad TV or eating an entire box of Samoas at one sitting, though my waist would probably appreciate it if I did.
I will never have an easy time making friends, never have a hard time driving off the ones I do make. I will probably never feel significant in a group or in my element in the middle of a posse. And, chances are, I will never be able to accept a shaker of salt directly from your hand, so don’t even try. I don’t like to fight.
I will, however, always help my friends in any way I can. I will always hug my daughter whenever she asks (and sometimes when she doesn’t), always tell my mother I love her as we part, and always return my father’s phone calls from here on out. I will always try to look on the brighter side of the darkness, always know from whence I came, and always be able to remember random, useless crap. I will never use a calculator unless long division or crazy multiplication is involved and a pencil isn’t available – or unless you go all pre-calculus on me. And I will always do my damnedest to be true to myself, even if that means pushing my own boundaries a little here and there.
Yes, I have my good parts and my bad. I need to learn to accept them all for what they are, accept me for who I am. I have spent too many years striving for perfection, failing hourly, then turning right around and using that failure as a frying pan with which to beat myself over the head.
Never again will I wonder why I always have a headache.
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