Everything’s a Problem in Need of Fixing
My mom has told me since I was a kid that I am a perfectionist. My high-school self would argue, in true teenager fashion, that I didn’t care about being perfect. I was in my I-don’t-care phase and I didn’t really grasp it. As an adult, I’m working in therapy to overcome several coping mechanisms my body and brain thought were in my most self-protecting interest. One of these that continually shows up in my day-to-day is this need to do everything good, to never be bad, to do the best thing all the time and never stray from the path of extreme goodness, which isn’t to say that I don’t have behaviors that aren’t considered bad societally. I smoke weed, party hard sometimes, don’t like acting or appearing professional. But I have always had this intense need to be good. Maybe it’s from when my grandpa told me, “be good for your momma,” or when I won prom queen senior year and my English teacher told me it was because I was “good,” which felt like the highest praise that I was therefore responsible of upholding. As I became older, people began to favor me more than when I was a kid, strangely, and they now compliment my appearance coupled with my personality—my heart and my goodness.
There’s a self-righteousness to it that didn’t come from me. Internally, I see myself as one minute decision away from being the worst sub-human being not worthy of existing in the presence of true decent folks. I’m very poor and insecure about my place in groups and society. I’m constantly taking in data from whatever situation I’m in, wondering how I place, who sees me as what. This can be dangerous. If I’m so concerned with being good, am I judging others as bad by the same standards I hold myself to? The answer is no, actually. While I admit, I enjoy feeling like the baddest bitch in the room, I actually grant others so much more grace than myself. I tend to see others as humans, perfect in their humanness, able to make mistakes and not have them etched into their characters permanently and unforgiving. But not me. One houseplant killed five years ago and I’m a piece of shit forever. I don’t know why forgiving myself does not comes easy as forgiving another. I understand others may be going through circumstances that I am unaware of, but since I know what I am going through, shouldn’t it be easier to forgive myself for making a mistake when I know exactly how and why it happened?
In my head, I have to do every thing correctly, and if I don’t, then any bad that I may incur is therefore my fault. The fact of the matter is, though, that I am a human and I am incapable of doing absolutely every thing all the time. Trying to relay that message to myself is painfully unreceived. I fill every moment with some form of self-improvement, whether it’s wellness-based meditation or fitness, reading for brain betterment, knowledge, or self-actualization, cleaning and organizing to feel better in my physical space, attending therapy, journaling or writing, listening to podcasts, learning a new language, researching future endeavors, going to work to bring ideas to fruition, secure my foundation, or fulfill obligations. I had a friend once say that they didn’t do anything unless they got something in return from it, and I thought, wow, how sad, and look at me now: exhausted and exhausting. And how boring. Where’s the life? Room for joy? I do all this to experience life better and wind up hardly living, too focused on if I’m being and doing good enough. Good enough for what? The universal balance of good and bad is a hilarity to me and I’ve already gone through the determining that there is no good or bad (there only is), so what is with me?
There’s something I’ve learned working in retail the past couple years that seriously distresses me, and that is that marketing in today’s society and economy has been relying on consumers’ insecurities in an exquisitely predatory manner. I’m using beauty as an example because I’ve been in the industry and I see it obviously. For instance: Big Sunscreen. Now, I am by no means a doctor, dermatologist, or scientist, but witnessing brands convince consumers that they need their specific product or their lives won’t be as good is sickening. It could be any product: the Dyson Airwrap convinces consumers that it’s ridiculous to have more than one hair tool. Instead, purchase this (additional) tool and all your needs will be met for the small price of $599.99. There are so many scalp serums that have emerged in the past two years because of the Mielle one that people buy without having any knowledge of why, let alone a need for it. Is your hair thinning? Forget that being a sign of aging, stress, or hormonal factors. You don’t need to see a doctor. Instead, get this entire new line of density-encouraging hair products complete with shampoo, conditioner, styling treatments, gummy vitamins, and scalp serums. In seriousness, I know that hair thinning is difficult to deal with and it’s absolutely understandable to want more dense hair. My point is to display the parallel of something that has naturally occurred in human existence being treated as an unnatural condition that necessitates a remedy. Too often we overlook the cause and skip straight to the solutions that are boxed up for us and widely available at your nearest retailer. Lips not too plump? There’s a fix for that. Hair not too long? There’s a fix for that. The variety of the human is being lessened and the boxes one is expected to check are growing. We’re scared that if we don’t check all these boxes that there’s a personal flaw within us. Big Sunscreen did this well by preying on people’s fears of aging. While they initially tried (rightly so) to scare people with the very real possibility of skin cancer, they found that an even bigger insecurity than death was that of aging obviously. Their message is that baby skin is attainable through the use of daily sunscreen, which just isn’t completely true. Yes, UV rays speed up skin’s aging process, but no amount of sunscreen will stop you from being 60-years-old and having a smile line or two. I’ve even learned of “anti-aging straws” apparently popularized by TikTok. I mean, we are more scared of aging than ever before. But not just aging. We’re scared of not fitting in because we don’t have what others have (i.e. Stanley cups, Touchland hand sanitizers, Peloton memberships, insert the latest fashion trend here), meaning we’re scared of being alone or unlovable. New needs are created then fulfilled and it’s never our perfect solution. There’s always something else missing. I’m scared that if I’m not my best self then I’m unworthy of receiving and living a joyous life.
Most of us want to be good, either by our own standards, our friends and family’s, or society’s. I’m always going to feel unfulfilled if I continually hold myself to unrealistic standards, and they’re unrealistic because they never stop. I’m going to have a bad day where I might make a mistake. Something’s going to come up where I can’t fulfill every obligation that I impose on myself. It’s not unnatural to be sad, anxious, or confused. It’s not unnatural to feel lazy or unmotivated. It’s okay to see something that isn’t perfect and decide that it’s okay and that it doesn’t make you bad. Everything can be a problem, and in a perfectionist-mindset, you’ll never be able to decide that everything is perfect. It’s all designed to be unattainable. If this ideal was within reach, we’d stop buying fixes and live contently, and marketing is too pervasive in the world to allow for that to happen. It’s not even the product that’s being sold, it’s the lifestyle. It’s about being the type of person who has or does that thing.
I’m working on feeling secure in my body, my brain, my home, my place on this earth. I have to be watchful for perfectionistic tendencies and thinking an item or an act will give me the peace and satisfaction I desperately seek. The whole wellness industry knows how we operate, and if we search more internally and stop giving companies the right to determine what we as people require, I think we’ll find more solutions that really aim to provide us fulfillment, not just an immediate and temporary fix. At least, I hope so. It’s going to be a process.