June 22, 2007

• Perfection

  We've always had three couches in the livingroom.  Three couches means three couches worth of pillows.  My brother and I and several kittens once built a fort out of two umbrellas, six blankets, 12 pillows and 4 chairs.  I would have to say that it was one of the more fabulous things I remember about life.

  As I was thinking on this delicate and gentle memory of days long since past and that amazing fort that my brother and I hid in with kittens and ate Girl Scout cookies in for over a week until my father was just too interested in the television to allow us to obstruct the view anymore, I compared that safe innocent feeling to my current situation.  I would hope that everyone can pick a moment from their childhood, a moment in some special secret place, where they felt like nothing could really be better...a moment where everything was "perfect."

  I've come to hate this word, actually.  Perfection has become a terrible enemy of mine over these past few years.  I've destroyed everything I ever was in the quest for perfection.  I feel like I have some kind of obsessive disorder that is centered around perfection.  I've lost myself in this word, this concept.

  I've never gotten a B.  Never.  I'm through my second year of college.  I'm a monster.  I've denied myself fulfillment and happiness so I could study.  I've blown off dear friends to read textbooks.  I've ignored my emotions and physical needs to memorize ultimately useless information.  Is having a 4.0 perfection?  It's only perfection if you are talking about learning how to work the grading system, that is memorizing information rather than learning it and forgetting it all to make room for more after the final is over.  I would think that on average I remember and understand about 25% of the information that I am presented with in any given class.  Using this stat, I should really have a 1.0.  I agree with this number.

  So I have a 4.0.  So I've been doing really well on my research.  So I can certainly obtain any career I desire.  Guess how many good friends I have.  FUCKING GUESS!!  None.  There is not one person on this earth that I can really call a true friend.  This is no failure on their parts either.  I am a joyless workaholic who judges everyone infinitely more harshly than myself.  No one meets my standards of, get this, perfection.

  Why is it that I desire perfection in all things so much?  Why is it that rather than working towards happiness I work toward perfection?  You might be thinking that they could be the same thing, but I beg to differ. 

  Happiness is that feeling that everything is good and satisfying.  Things might not be perfect, but they are good enough.  You feel like you don't need anything else.  You are satisfied.  That is happiness to me. 

  Perfection is so different.  Perfection brings on the feeling that you can always do better than you are doing.  You are never satisfied if you work toward perfection.  Why?  Because everything can always be closer to perfect.

  I think satisfaction is so much better than perfection.

  I'm never satisfied.  I'm never happy.

  I was happy, though.  I remember.  I remember the forts and the games and the joy and the luck and the fun and the randomness of life before I knew any better.

  "What's different now?" I keep asking myself in my head.  What changed?  I run everything over and over in my head.  I think about everything that has ever happened to me.  I can pinpoint the moment I felt true, deep, unending sadness.  I can pinpoint the moment I chose perfection over happiness for the first time.

  When I sacrificed another person's happiness for what I thought would bring me greater happiness, that was the moment the concept of happiness was tainted for me.  If I was happy then why did I need to be more happy?  I sort of think that happiness is either true of false, either you are or you aren't happy.  There aren't really degrees of happiness.  It's just a feeling underlying everything else.  So you twisted your ankle or you got into a fender bender.  You're still happy underneath the superficial little sadnesses of daily life.  That's what I mean.

  I don't have that feeling.  It's like I'm a house without a foundation.  My emotions are just thrown about in a pile with no support.  There's no base of happiness to work from.  I'm simply floating in a sea of indecision and depression.  I'm joyful one day and crushed the next.  Nothing is lasting anymore.  Everything is superficial.

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  For the sake of my next discussion, think of love like a long cylinder of light winding through some kind of endless space.  Each tube represents one person's feelings of "love" for one other person.

  I still don't presume to understand love.  I don't think it really means anything.  It seems so foolish to chose a single person as "the one" and discard your feelings for all others.  I don't think I'm a one person lover.  However, let's just pretend that I do indeed understand love for the sake of my examples.

  We all start simply floating in this endless space.  As we get to know people we begin to have feelings for them.  Some are never more than friends, but a few could be.  As these feelings occur, we glide nearer to these cylinders of light.  Should we enter into some kind of relationship, we also enter into the cylinder of light corresponding to the other person.  Should we enter relationships with more than one person, then we exist in several cylinders at the same time.  Should we hurt someone upon getting out of a relationship, our self that exists in this space is injured by moving out of the corresponding cylinder.  If we cannot let go of the feelings associated with the relationship, we remain in its cylinder, feeling the pain until we can let go. Is the picture clear?

  Currently my self is injured.  I gave myself a deep cut when I destroyed a young man's dreams back in freshman year.  I still haven't healed.  In addition, I exist in four separate cylinders.  One of them is a constant source of pain.  Before I came to college I existed in only one cylinder.  I had no wounds.  I had no pain.  Now my little pretend self is nearly destroyed.  I don't have many more mistakes that I can make before I cease to feel love.

  I'll never again be without pain.  I'll never again feel the innocent happiness of devoting oneself completely to someone else.  I'll never again be whole, and it's all because I so deeply desired perfection that I nearly destroyed myself.  I am truly a failure.

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  1:  Just tell me that I never had a chance.  Just tell me that I never will have a chance.  Then I could let you go.

  2:  Stop making it harder for me to do what must be done.  You know it's coming so stop stalling it.  No matter what you do, there is always an end to anything.

  3:  You are one of the few human beings I've ever known that is indeed more intelligent than me.  Should you ask for my body and mind, I would give them.  However, you must do the asking.

  4:  Turkenaw!!  Call me and we'll watch Street Fighter and probably end up making out and regretting it later.

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  So you think you're so funny with your "Secret Xanga" link??  I just checked it.  I didn't really believe you.  How dare you taunt me so.

  • 10:58 pm
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