Perfection. The action or process of improving something until it is faultless or as faultless as possible. Faultless. Free from defects or errors. Any time I have an idea and the audacity to want to share it, there’s a voice that sounds an awful lot like my own that hesitates not to tell me I have to wait. That tells me, “It’s not ready yet…” “I just have to wait until…”

I spent most of my childhood and teenage years thinking. Thinking about what I wanted to do and why I couldn’t. And the rare moment I would actually do something, I would spend the time immediately after thinking about what I just did. My inner world was always the loudest thing I could hear, but the words I heard myself speaking and the actions I fantasized about could never seem to find their way out. I experienced life far more in my head than I ever did in the physical world. Being overwhelmed by the thoughts of that moment any time I look at a picture or video of myself from the past is why I’ve never been fond of looking back. I can see that now it was never making a fool of myself by doing something embarrassing that I feared. It was always trying to be perfect and failing at that. It was trying to be what I thought was faultless and failing. Nothing terrifies me more than feeling unworthy of the expectations I want to say I have for myself, but really, what I think others have for me. I’m the strong friend, the strong sister, the strong daughter, and I always have been. I can’t wince while the pressure crushes me. They can’t see that.

I’ve always been told, “Expect the worst and hope for the best.” This is one of those phrases the world came up with to prepare you for the disappointment you will inevitably feel when whatever you’re doing does not work out. Disappointment is the default, isn’t it? You should expect things to go badly for you. You haven’t done this, this, and that to deserve good things.

This race for perfection, where it always seems to be sprinting just fast enough to be out of my grasp, only feels more impossible when it comes to those things that make me feel exposed, like sharing my passion with the world. If you’ve heard me speak, you’ve heard me talk about how much I love to write. I speak so sweetly about how much I love the written word and how it’s always come so naturally to me. But I’ve never let anyone see it outside of hiding behind the loophole that is academic assignments. Years ago, fear even took me as far as making an Instagram account to “post my work … just for my eyes only.” My deepest parts have always longed to share themselves, but that voice would never allow it. I’ve learned enough of love to know that it means nothing if not shared. Love does not want you to keep it to yourself. Hiding ourselves from the world is selfish and does nothing to support the community essential to our humanity.

I would dress myself in the lies of needing to tweak this and keep working on that, and then it would be “there.” I could count just how many “planning phases,” I told myself I was in and never left for some strange reason. I can remember every single time I had dreamt up an idea, only for it to stay that way. It never got “there,” and far too much of my energy was spent not realizing it would never would. I’d tell myself I can’t share anything until it’s perfect, but for another strange reason, the goalpost keeps moving on what perfect is, so I guess I’ll never do anything. Bleak.

It all comes down to being afraid of vulnerability, which is cliche, I know. But it’s true. I’ve realized something, though. The lies I would tell myself about “perfecting my craft” are nothing but support for the lie that is perfection itself. There is no such thing as perfecting something, and I don’t care how cleverly it is spun. The idea of “perfecting” something not only implies that it is free of error but also that there is absolutely nothing that can be changed about it. And that is simply not how people work. There is only trying and editing and doing that again. You never stop trying, and you never stop editing. Our minds do not work in a way that stops wanting to make things new.

The state of being imperfect is the state of rebelling against the very nature of the system that keeps me thinking I need to keep my gifts to myself until they look identical to something no one has ever actually been able to show me. I could choose to continue to chase after what always seems to wriggle its way out of my grip the moment I think I have it figured out, and that could either drive me insane or exhaust me to the point where I stop trying. It is simply not sustainable.

Planning for this blog, again, has been one of the most uneasy experiences I’ve ever had. However, it wasn’t the actual planning phase that was uncomfortable; as we all know, I’m very comfortable in the planning phases. It’s been the inching closer and closer to being finished that has proved to kick up the deepest, dustiest emotions for me to face. I’ve had multiple crying sessions, times where I would sit in front of my laptop and would just find myself picking up my phone in place of my hands on the keyboard. Sometimes, I hated everything I did and questioned why I wasted my time knowing I could never actually do this. Several times, I allowed my mind to settle on the thought that people would read this and question why I’ve ever said I love to write. I spent a lot of time trying to ignore the part of me waiting for a reason out of my control to come out of nowhere and stop everything. Forcing myself to keep typing even when so much of me is, even now, telling me to run away and tell everyone some excuse or another as to why “it just wasn’t my time” feels like playing ding dong ditch with myself. The version of me waiting on this version to catch up is doing the work while I cling onto her leg like a child who just won’t let go. This experience feels like I’m exactly where I need to be and like I’m doing something silly for even thinking I’m ready for at all. For me, forfeiting this race means embracing what life feels like in the discomfort of the transition phase. The phase where I refuse to cling onto the part of me that wants to hide because she can’t fathom deserving a life where success does not have to come only from suffering through hell and high water. The phase where I’m no longer clinging to the legs of my past or running after some future where I’m “better.”

Even through facing the bits I’ve buried, I don’t think I can ever truly quiet that voice that sounds a concerning amount like my own, telling me my only two options are faultless or failure. And I won’t try. I’ve spent enough time feeling like a shaken soda bottle to know that the more you try to ignore something, the more present it becomes just to spite you. So, I won’t try. I won’t attempt to pretend it doesn’t exist. I won’t pretend I don’t hear it. I won’t attempt to conceal it with confidence, either. I know that I cannot continue to be my own barrier. I cannot let my mind betray me into thinking I need to stay where I am. The only option is to use its tactics against it and continue to move in spite of it.