you will never be perfect

perfection is boring anyway

From a young age, my mother always told me, “How you look matters.” She told me to be very wary of how I show up in the public eye. She criticized everything I did—from the way I tied my shoes to the way I styled my hair, to the friends I had, to the clothes I wore. And honestly, she still does it.

She does this so people won’t write me off when they see me, and so I can be a great representation of her—or maybe it’s her way of making up for how she wished she had shown up when she was younger. Either way, I understand that, in her own fucked-up way, this is how she shows love.

It’s not surprising that this had adverse effects on me. I internalized everything she said and developed a perfectionist complex.

This seeped into every aspect of my life—school, religion, friendships, relationships. I had to be the perfect student, the perfect Christian, the perfect friend—just the perfect girl. I stretched and starved and beat myself into trying to be perfect and it never happened.

I didn’t believe that I was allowed to be happy if I wasn’t perfect. And since I wasn’t perfect, I thought the only way someone could love me was if the cosmos conspired to bring us together.

I didn’t believe that someone might just choose to love me.

I romanticized forbidden love, star-crossed lovers, and unrequited love so much that I thought my life had to be that way. I didn’t consider the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, someone might choose to love me because they want to. And that, no matter the circumstances, they’d choose me every single time.

I turned 25 recently, and with that came the inevitable realizations and epiphanies about life (frontal lobe development, as they say). One major realization was about the concept of perfection, which has followed me like a shadow my whole life.

I’ve realized that I have been doing myself an extreme disservice by allowing what I’ve been conditioned to believe about image and perfection to stop me from being happy.

If you don’t allow yourself to be happy before you’re perfect, your life will continue to pass you by. Days, weeks, months, years will go by, and you’ll have denied yourself the sweet honey of life simply because of an arbitrary idea of perfection or doing everything right.

You will not be perfect. You will make mistakes. You will hurt and be hurt. And yet, you are still deserving of love and happiness. Don’t shame yourself into believing otherwise.

You may think that if you do something wrong, it means you are “bad,” and “bad people” don’t deserve good things. This is not true. You are allowed to make mistakes. It does not make you bad.

Even when you do everything right, say all the right things, wear the right things, contort yourself to be the perfect version of whatever they want, it still won’t be enough for them.

This is because perfection doesn’t exist. It’s a myth. And yes, you may be able to come very close, but at what cost? Is that how you want to spend your only human life—chasing a myth? Only to ever get maybe 90% of the way and still not be able to receive the love and admiration you deeply desire? Even when you do, it’s still never enough. When will it be enough? How much will you stretch yourself until it’s enough? How much will you starve yourself? Until you cease to exist? Until your bones are weak and frail? Until you have destroyed yourself? For them?

The people who are meant to love you will love you regardless of how pretty, skinny, tall, smart, rich, or funny you are. They love you because you are you, and they don’t want to change you. Anyone who requires you to change who you are in order for them to love you is not worth your time.

The people who only love you because you are pretty, skinny, tall, smart, rich, or funny are not people you will ever truly feel safe around. You know that their love comes with conditions that are subject to change. You can only suffocate yourself for so long until, eventually, the real you will seep through. And they will run at the sight of it, and it will make you ache. You deserve better than that.

They say there is no amount of money that will ever be enough. I’d say the same thing about perfection. You will never be skinny enough, pretty enough, or likable enough to make you feel complete. You must feel complete on your own.

The reality is, you’ll never be perfect, and that’s exactly what makes you perfect.