Perfection!

Remember that game Perfection? I used to play that game as a child. Trying to fit all those oddly shaped pieces in thirty seconds or less with that buzzing noise and my brother and sister yelling, "Oh Hurry!!!" For that thirty intense seconds the rush of getting that perfect and beating the game before all hell broke loose was the best analogy for my life I have come up with. There is only one problem with my life, it doesn't mirror that game. It isn't a game at all. The pieces of my life are broken, from other peoples' games, or just plain missing. Its pretty hard to fit a jigsaw puzzle piece into a round hole, but yet I have tried with the clock ticking and people yelling at me to hurry up. Guess what? I didn't win, all hell broke loose and my "perfect" moment was thrown to the wind.

Hello, my name is Crystal and I'm a recovering Perfectionist. I am not perfect and I don't care if you aren't either. Life is not easy most of the time and it is even harder when we all hold ourselves to incredible standards and strive for perfection. Perfection is an illusion created by our own expectations. For example, I can look at Cindy Crawford (Wow dating myself a little there!) and say she has a perfect face and a perfect body in that picture and assume she must have a perfect life and a perfect husband, perfect, perfect, perfect. That photo is the game Perfection. A thirty second snapshot that in my mind appears perfect. In reality, she may have starved herself for a month to lose nine pounds because the producer for that shoot thought she needed to be one size smaller or a little gaunt looking for that particular picture. She might have been struggling with going on location versus spending time with her actor boyfriend, who could possibly fall in love with a co-star while she was starving and working hard to capitalize on her looks while she could. She might have had to wear extensions and false eyelashes because the stress of always looking perfect was making her hair fall out. However, for that thirty seconds she won MY game of Perfection. She fit into the hole I had created for a perfect look. I only fit into that hole maybe once or twice in my opinion and the rest of the time my muffin top and wide hips that pushed out two children like a pro were way to wide to allow me to fit, but I wasted a lot of time trying. I starved, worked out, spent money on diets and Weight Watchers trying to fit into that hole while my time ran out over and over again. One day my hairstylist, who is one of my best friends, said to me something profound that I have never forgotten. I was giving her a picture of a model with hair that was cut pretty much like I had mine cut, just styled differently, and I was arguing with her the possibility of her making my hair look like that. She explained that this picture was taken with perfect lighting, perfect wind machines, a team of stylists with makeup and was probably the best shot of a hundred taken that day with perfect weather conditions by a professional photographer. My hair was never going to look like that! BUZZ! All the pieces flying! Then she said something that made me cry. "You have the most beautiful hair and you don't even know it," and I didn't. I really didn't know that my hair was beautiful because I was too busy trying to make it look perfect.

Perfection can be a powerful addictive force. It is the force that compels Olympians, professional athletes, artists, and other very passionate people. Talk to any one of these people and you can easily see a hefty price they have paid for those gold medals or their careers. Perfectionists have incredibly high standards that they can apply at will to themselves or others that affect their lives. I often had other moms tell me, "Wow, you did all that? It's perfect!" What I heard was, "Wow, you're a perfect Mom." I can't tell you the addiction that fed in me. They should have asked my children how perfect I was. It is an addiction that many people feel like they have to look perfect for others. When I had all my kids' toys labeled in boxes of separate colored legos and everything had a place it belonged or my kitchen smelled like Betty Crocker had been there all day, I was at my peak of perfection. However, just like the photograph above it was a sick illusion. I was a control freak that made my children feel worthless because they didn't understand that I needed them to be as perfect as me and keep their things organized. I needed them to stop making my pieces fall out! I needed to look perfect, but they were just babies and I yelled at them. My worst regret as a parent was that I scared my kids and yelled making them feel like they needed to be perfect too. Instead of playing with them and making games out of cleanup time or just not buying them any more useless toys they had way too many of, I robbed them of innocence and included them in my addiction to the pursuit of perfection. Perfect Mom? Perfect Monster is more like it.

What creates this need to be perfect? I have spent a great deal of time examining my addiction and have come up with a few answers. The first is just as I described above, our parents. My mother was an avid perfectionist, although she denies it to this day. Just as I yelled at my boys for being their authentic little selves and make a mess of my perfectly organized rooms, she yelled at me for being less than perfect as a child. Thankfully our situations were drastically different as mothers go. I was a stay at home mom that put all of my self-worth into having a clean house, dinner ready by five o'clock (and not mac-n-cheese mind you, dinner from scratch!), and a well groomed lawn. I was room-mother, mommy and me group participant, pre-school helper, etc. I loved it and hated it at the same time. I loved the attention I would get from other moms, but it was so stressful to maintain that level of perfection that at home, I was a bitch on wheels. My now ex-husband hated me, my kids were afraid of me and I never took time out to enjoy all those events I was running all over the place to organize or enjoy my own perfect home. BUZZ! Guess what? Exactly, all my pieces kept flying out. Nine years of that, adding on two part time jobs and I literally had gained 100 pounds, I was miserable and unstable mentally. Perfect you say? Perfect mess!

A little background on my parents? My mother was a teen mom who married my twenty year old dad. She was the youngest of five children in a poor family with a teen mom and a controlling father. I think she basically raised herself with little parent involvement and learned very early that as long as you "appear" clean and normal, all things are possible. She grew up craving attention that was divided between four other children from parents who worked very long hours. She matured into a master manipulator and behaving in ways that fed her need for attention and acceptance she wasn't getting from her parents. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming her for anything or my grandparents. I think they all did the best job they could with the tools they were given. When my mom's first marriage failed she immediately married my step-father and further complicated our lives forever. I plan on blogging a future blog regarding father figures, but for now I want to just say, it would have been more helpful to me if my mother had stayed single her entire life and grew up instead of remaining a perpetual twenty-something and letting my step-father take care of her like he was her father. I truly believe my mother spent thirty-two years playing Perfection and I watched her pieces fly off into space so many times that I became to believe that was what marriage was. The man gets to dictate what the expectations for you are and you have to fit into them. Again, not blaming my parents because they do love me and they did the best they could. I think they both suffered severely in pursuit of perfection. My step-father had extreme expectations of himself and everyone around him and if you didn't live up to them, you were worthless. My mother was obsessed with living up to his ideal expectations of what she should do that she never even considered what she wanted to do with the majority of her life and she created a fear in all of us; of my father, of rejection, of pain and of being authentically ourselves. There was no room for anything artistic or different, just the expectation of perfection. Notice how it was no longer just enough to be clean and normal? Now we had to be perfect! We had the best toys, the best clothes, the best cars. My brother had a Porsche for Christ's sake and we lived in Kansas. My parent's marriage, the relationship that set the tone for all my expectations of future relationships, was a lie. I won't say my mother and father didn't love each other, because I believe they do. I also believe they didn't have a clue what love was for a very long time and they still struggle with the concept. My parents are now divorced and my mother struggles daily with expectations. She has no concept of self, money, responsibility but she is learning slowly and painfully. It is hard to grow up at 57. I can see that she has lost so many of her pieces now that she has quit playing the game. She can recognize when she is feeding her attention addiction and when she is truly enjoying herself. She is finally maturing into a woman she likes and I'm proud of her. She isn't perfect, but that is okay with me and okay with her. She is starting to not expect me to be as perfect either, which is nice.

Was my first marriage doomed because of the expectations I had growing up? No, but it started out with many strikes against it. I had many strikes against me becoming a well rounded adult, even though from an outsider I'm sure we all looked like we had it made in the shade. I struggled as a child to be perfect. I had to get straight A's and wear nice clothes and smile. Why you ask? Because that is what was expected of me. If I can rewind back to my mother's first marriage for a second, it may explain a little more of my issue with perfection. My biological father told me once and I think I was around age seven, "You are my perfect little girl." I was wearing a crushed blue velvet dress at his wedding. I really liked this particular woman he married, she had no kids and she spoiled me rotten. She was the best cook and a sweet little Mexican woman named Debbie. Debbie basically thought I parted the sea! We collected dolls and went shopping on my weekends with my Dad. My Dad thought we were just a perfect little family and we were as long as the money kept flowing and they got along. Unfortunately, my biological father was a drug dealer and a liar. Debbie divorced him and I never saw her again and he never told me I was perfect again. He never said he was sorry she left. In fact we never talked about her again. I missed her very badly! She made may father better and showed me he was capable of staying sober for the weekends I was there and having fun with us. When she left he went right back to getting high, whether I was there or not, among other things that were destructive. As I matured, I decided I wasn't going to see him anymore because of his choice to live a lifestyle that had nothing to do with being a responsible parent. He built up in my heart a longing to be that little princess in the crushed blue velvet dress though. It was extremely difficult to let go of all that pain and anger, but I did for me. I did not, however, let go of my need to be perfect and my belief that if I was my next Dad would love me enough. So many issues, not enough blog right? I'll get back to my father's in another blog I promise.

I was perfect for quite some time. A perfect student, a perfect daughter/babysitter/friend to all the people around me. I had lots of friends, boyfriends, voted most popular and was in all the yearbook pictures. Then a wonderful thing happened. I fell hopelessly and madly in love! My first crush and my first lover. I would have done anything for that boy and did. I can still feel that rush of emotion. He was my idea of perfection and I was his. I would love to say this ended well, but given the theme here I think you will guess where this is going. BUZZ! Pieces everywhere! Let's just say after high school he married someone else. I was in a state of devastation. I compared everyone to him and constantly wondered why didn't he want to marry me? I would recover slightly, but I couldn't get over the fact he chose someone else. He broke up with me and was married a couple months later. We had broken up several times, but had always come back together. I wasn't perfect enough. My pieces didn't fit anymore, but apparently hers did. So, off I went to college to get some new pieces! I recovered, but was still reeling from that break up when all my friends were getting married and having babies. My new pieces were soaked in alcohol. I was miserable. Enter my first husband who was more than happy to pick up all my pieces because he didn't have any of his own. He was a loner with almost no friends, barely moved out of his parents house and into their rental house, decent job, decent looks, no where near my ideal perfect. I was so tired and worn down at this point (drunk a lot of the time) that I settled. Amazingly, nobody tried to convince me I was in severe need of therapy, not a long term relationship. My ex-husband did make some of my pieces fit. He helped me regain some confidence and helped me become a mother, but then time ran out along with all our money. BUZZ!! All hell broke loose! When all the pieces finally fell out of my marriage, I was completely at a loss. I did get some therapy and started really looking at myself. This is the point in the story when I just put the game away and started being totally honest. I was not perfect and that was really okay with me. It wasn't okay with most of the people that knew me it turns out.

Second thing that made me a Perfectionist is the attention I received from everyone for appearing perfect. Even though I was killing myself to look slim (and literally starving myself, ruining my metabolism) and spending way too much money on lots of things I didn't need and the kids didn't need from clothes to household goods, I thrived on the attention I got from other mom's, teachers, friends and co-workers. Early on in our marriage my ex-husband lost all interest in me because I was not a very nice person. Selifsh, needy, self-absorbed and angry were what he received most of the time. I never blamed him for losing interest, I did blame him later for not trying to work things out until it was too late. I never received much attention from him and mostly just received criticism and anger in return. We fed off each other in negative ways and ending our eleven year marriage was the best thing that ever happened to me. I still work on our relationship daily to co-parent and be as positive in our childrens' lives as possible. I think I replaced alcohol with him for awhile and then realized I didn't need either one. I wanted him to be my husband, but he wanted me to NEED him. He still doesn't understand the difference, but he has a new wife that needs him desperately to make her pieces fit. After my divorce, I got a lot of attention from men. I had lost weight and was free and open to everything. I went a little crazy. I dated around and had fun. I don't regret those months, but I realized very quickly this wasn't the kind of attention I wanted either. I wanted something honest, something real! I now get my attention from myself and it's awesome. I get attention even if I'm not a princess because I pay attention to my feelings and my patterns. I listen to my gut when I am dreading a task. I ask questions like, "Why am I doing this?" I think about what I'm doing, not what I'm going to get out of doing this. I don't care what people think about me anymore. I don't want to be perfect and I don't want anyone I'm with to feel like I think they have to be perfect. I find ways to celebrate my kids and how they are unique and different and NEVER make them fear rejection from me just because they did something I didn't expect or don't have an interest in. Do I still love attention? Yes, that is what recovery is about. I'm not under a time limit and I can make mistakes, but I'm conscious in my decisions and I'm not trying to be perfect just real. Amazingly enough, I do get attention from the people who love me just as I am and it feels so much better than getting attention for things that were lies.

The third thing that made me an avid Perfectionist was my expectations about EVERYTHING! I'm still trying daily to figure out where in the hell I got the idea that I had to be Martha Stewart? Sometimes I think we are just born with screwed up ideas in our heads and the nature part gets all mixed up with the nurture part. I did watch an abundance of TV in my younger years, but still I don't think that is responsible for the "Clarke Griswald" affect. You know that speech in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase and his wife are laying in bed covered in tree sap and she is trying desperately to convince him that his expectations of every family event were just too high? Like him, I would have no part of it. I had an vision in my head of something wonderful and nothing would convince me that my expectation was outrageous. Once I was able to logically and rationally accept that I didn't have to be perfect, magically neither did anything or anyone else. It has been absolutely freeing to realize that I didn't have to blow $3,000.00 on Christmas so everyone would have an awful time. I spent about $500.00 total last year and it was the most heartwarming wonderful Christmas I have had in years and I felt so close to my kids. It is truly a wonderfully imperfect life. I try to approach all situations with an open possibility, not a rigid expectation. I expect to make mistakes! Turns out I'm pretty good at making them despite my perception of perfection.

I'm not trying to win anymore. I'm not in a hurry unless I'm driving. I'm not as intense, angry, irritated, selfish, and mean as I used to be. It's hard to get things done perfectly and be nice. I am more concerned about being myself than being a perfect bitch that gets a lot of things done at the expense of everyone's feelings. I'm not trying to please anybody or make anybody else happy. I am trying to be positive, hopeful and open.

I want to share one more story with you about perfection. The night of my 3rd Grade Music Program my mother was desperately trying to get my brother that was three and my sister that was one and a half ready, fed, and into their nice clothes without making us late. My step-dad was attempting to go this time making matters worse because he was hogging the bathroom from my mom. My mom placed a glass bottle of baby food (turkey I think) in the microwave. I'm standing in the kitchen in my dress watching complete choas (feeling the timer clicking trying to get those pieces to fit) doing everything my mom was asking quickly, furiously trying to help her make us look perfect and dress my baby brother. The microwave exploded in a hail of glass and hot baby food. To this day my mom doesn't remember if she left the metal lid on or what happened, but we were all covered in babyfood! It was on the ceiling. She had glass in her eyes and my sister was screaming bloody murder. (BUZZ time ran out) My step-dad came out of the bathroom and screamed at me for having a program. I don't even remember what he said, but I remember I felt this was all my fault. I think I truly gave up on my family that night. This is how sick and twistedly perfect we were, we made it there on time. There is no way anyone would have know a piece of my soul died to make it to that program and the pain I felt knowing my mother had glass in her eye and sat there beside my her man instead of asking him to take us on the program while she went to the hospital. She did go the next day, but she knew he wouldn't have gone and that I would have missed my program. What she didn't know is I could have cared less and wanted to crawl in a hole and die from being yelled at all night. If you take anything else from this blog, let it be this. Nobody is perfect! Least of all a child. They are supposed to make mistakes and pour paint on carpets! They are supposed to get dirty and smelly and hate to take a bath! They are people in progress and should never feel bad because they aren't perfect. I wasn't responsible for getting to my music concert on time or for even scheduling the stupid concert, but I am responsible for my kids learning they don't have to be or pursue perfection or expect life to be perfect. Life is messed up, sticky, wonderful, unexpected, and wrong sometimes. It's not a game and you don't get a redo so you should try hard! Effort is all I ask from my kids most days, but love is always what I get and that is so much better than perfection.

** P.S. I use the word addiction lightly, but I really feel like I have an addiction that is as strong as alcohol or drugs. I use the word recovery because I have had therapy, but still have to work on my issues daily!! I don't want to diminish anyone that is struggling with a "real" addiction to drugs or alcohol by using these terms. I am not a therapist and don't want to be one! These are just my feelings.