I have a tendency to share everything that’s going wrong while it’s happening.
In the past, I thought I was sharing after-the-fact. Something traumatic would happen and then it would be over and I would share it as some form of art thinking I had it all figured out. Only to realize, as time would tell, that I was still very much in the beginning stages. The cycle looked something like this:
Traumatic Event
Traumatic Event ends
The overwhelming need to create something out of it
Spending time alone, creating
Planning the release of the creation into the world
Release
Cower and hide in shame and deal with massive vulnerability hangover
Recoil from all forms of social interactions, including social media
Realize I may still have some stuff to deal with
Go to Therapy
A classic example of this cycle was the birth of this very SubStack. After deciding to release some writing I had been hanging on to for some time, on my 37th birthday I began this SubStack journey and then spiralled myself so deep down into a pit of shame that it took me nearly 5 months to claw my way out. Now that I’m back from the depths, I have distilled my thoughts down to one sentence.
“I am not perfect.”
I have spent most of my life striving to be just that; perfect. Not perfect on my terms, I still don’t even know what it means to be the version of myself that I want to be. No, I was striving to be perfect by everyone else’s definition. Which meant I had oh so many different versions of myself.
It’s exhausting, trying to be exactly what any one person needs you to be. Studying everyone’s body language, energy shifts, subtle eye movements and hand gestures to figure out when to back off or when to lean in. Learning to be the perfect daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, niece, student, friend, wife or leader has been a full time job, and often left me feeling empty, confused and hurt. Being perfect for everyone neglects the one person you should be paying attention to.
When my parents dropped me off in Ontario to begin my post secondary education, the last thing my dad said to me before they left was, “you can’t be perfect all the time.” He had my number. I wish it hadn’t taken me nearly 20 more years to stop trying to prove him wrong.
Now I sit here, in my 37 year old skin, with nothing figured out other than this one, personally shocking revelation; I am not perfect.
I am going to share things too soon. I am going to make people uncomfortable. I am going to lose friends I wasn’t meant to have. I’m going to get it wrong sometimes and I reserve the right to change my mind and to add or subtract labels I think are important or ones that no longer serve me. I am going to use this space as a place to process all these complicated feelings and thoughts and most importantly, I’m going to keep sharing this journey from the “messy middle”, as Glennon Doyle would say, for one very beautiful reason:
Every time I share from this place, this deep, soul-screaming, life-questioning place, so many of you reach out to say thank you and share your own experience. For that, I am grateful, and for that, I will keep going.
So, from one recovering perfectionist to so many others I say, hello from the messy middle. Thank you for being here. Let’s figure this s#!t out together.
Cheers to the chaos,
-a
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in”
- Leonard Cohen