Becoming the un-perfectionist.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent. (and the not so innocent because I’m a decent human being.)

There once was a little girl who pleased everyone. She was actually pretty good at it too. She was clever, she was cute, she was obedient and she did well in school. She liked to read and she liked to sing and she liked going to school. Her parents thought they were the luckiest. Her teachers adored her. For a long time, she pleased everyone without really trying to. Everyone told her she was good, so she believed that she was. She saw other kids who weren’t quite so adored by teachers and thought it was because they weren’t as good as her. She thought she was perfect. She thought she was doing everything right. She was happy and she thought she was happy because she was perfect.

                The little girl had lots of friends, she was perfect after all, but her closest friends were little girls that were also adored by teachers and also thought they were perfect. People are typically comfortable with people that are like themselves. So there was a group of little girls that thought they were the “bestest” and the smartest of all the kids in their grade. For a while that was fine, they liked the same things and they had the same goals. But little girls have a tendency for cattiness. Girls in general have a tendency for cattiness.

                Perhaps the little girl and her friends would’ve been fine if they hadn’t decided they wanted to be better than each other. The little girl had one friend who particularly got on her nerves, Annie. The two of them acted like friends on the surface, (the way girls often do,) but they would cut into each other and put each other down all the time. One day the little girl made a mistake. She was mean, she was unkind, and she did not act how a friend should act. She ruined Annie’s shoes. She nearly got a white slip for her actions. (White slips were unheard of for this little girl and her friends.) The little girl sat in the hall crying and realized all her mistakes. She felt awful. When her mother found out what she had done she was in BIG trouble and she cried even more. She knew she had to fix it. She personally apologized to Annie and to Annie’s mother and gave her own money to buy new shoes. She did everything she could, but she wasn’t happy with her friends anymore.

At recess she started walking around by herself rather than playing with her “friends.” She was lonely. She didn’t like the feeling of not having any friends. The little girl began to notice another girl who walked around by herself at recess, Jenny. The little girl passed Jenny so often when they were both walking around lonely, that they started walking around lonely together. They became friends. Jenny didn’t try to be better than her. Jenny didn’t put her down. Jenny didn’t make her feel like she had anything to prove. She liked to be around Jenny. This new friend made her happier than the other little girls ever had. Jenny was not perfect. She had a speech problem that made it hard to understand her sometimes. She struggled in school and didn’t always turn in her homework. The little girl realized that those things didn’t really matter, she liked her friend even though she wasn’t perfect.

 The little girl realized that being perfect didn’t bring her happiness. Having friends who were kind to her made her happy.  She liked to read and she liked to sing and she liked going to school not because liking those things made her perfect but because those things made her happy. There were other things that made her happy too. Things she hadn’t realized. With her old friends, they hadn’t ever played “baby games” at recess. With Jenny she imagined an alternate universe where the two of them were Movie Star sisters every day at recess. Recess suddenly was a lot more fun than it used to be.

 The years went on and the little girl made more friends and had more adventures with Jenny by her side. Learning at eight years old that she didn’t have to be perfect to be happy was one of the best things that happened to her. She stopped caring about how others saw her and started caring about how she saw herself. She liked to be goofy, she liked to play pretend. She stopped trying to be so grown up. She still strived to do her best but she learned that it wasn’t the end of the world to fall a little short. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has struggles. Being real isn’t bad. Thinking you’re better than others doesn’t mean that you are, it just limits the number of people you can connect with.

Here I am. I’m Seventeen and a half. I’m a Junior in High School and I’ll be voting for the next president. The future is coming at me pretty fast in the next couple of years and it scares me a little bit. I get stressed over homework, friends, boyfriends, college, lots of things. I want to do things right, but I know I’m gonna fall on my face sometimes. I am not perfect and I don’t have to be. There’s more at stake than there was when I first learned that lesson at age eight. I’m grateful I learned it before things got quite so stressful. I am at a stage in my life where I am not afraid to be myself. I do what I want. I’m confident enough to not care what others think of me. I would not be confident if I was trying to be perfect. I would not be able to help others and live life the way I do if I was still trying to be perfect. You have to accept yourself before you can accept anyone else. Here I am. Seventeen and a half. Full of flaws, shortcomings, mistakes, stories and most importantly lessons. I don’t regret any of the choices I’ve made so far, I’ve learned a lot from them. There are some things I definitely won’t be doing again, (a few boys I will not be kissing again.) but I wouldn’t go back and undo them.

Here I am. Seventeen and a half. Annie moved away and Jenny and I have gone to different Jr. Highs and High Schools. Hindsight is 20/20. Looking at where life as taken me and the girls I was friends with in 3^rd grade is quite interesting. Jenny no longer has a speech problem. She gets straight A’s and is on the swim team at her school. I Annie moved to Montana and has since visited a couple of times. There’s no grudges. All is forgiven on both sides. She still drives me nuts but hey, she lives in a different state now rather than down the street. Some of those other “perfect” little girls have since come to learn that being perfect is not important. They are all doing different things, but they are all doing things that make them happy. One of those little girls is still a close friend of mine, not that the road hasn’t been rocky at times. She is still a perfectionist. She still thinks she’s better than others and takes every opportunity to tell me what I’m doing wrong with my life. She takes every opportunity to put me in my place. I just roll my eyes and smile. I love her how she is, even if her judgments sometimes get old. I know she loves me and deep down loves it when I pull out her tiny streak of rebellion and show her how to have some fun. Part of her wants to loosen up. She puts a lot of pressure on herself. I put pressure on myself too, but I’m a little more flexible. I’ve learned to roll with the punches and be happy with what I have. I’m not perfect, but I am happy.