A Perfectionist's Nightmare
What Do You Actually Need Right Now?
As I sit here typing this, at half past 12 in the morning, with roughly thirteen different browsers open on my computer, I can’t help but wonder - what is my Perfectionism trying to ‘save’ me from?
There are too many items on my proverbial plate right now. Staying up late is absolutely not helpful, but I left my melatonin at my boyfriend’s house, and my mind is grinding WAY to hard to leave any room for restfulness (trust me, I tried four separate meditations and none of them did the trick.)
Normally under these circumstances, when finding myself with ‘too much on my plate,’ I would do what is called the Ostrich Effect. Where I’d basically isolate myself, eat copious amounts of junk food, binge watch bad television, focus solely on my budget and how much money I could make in a week, and dive my head deep under the sands of ‘responsibility.’ Responsibility here is code for not listening to what my inner creature actually needs.
There is a balance, for me and maybe you too, for work time and for play time. The problem though, is that because I’ve been healing from years of poverty, addiction recovery, and generational trauma (PLUS the economic challenges of our days,) more of my time must be devoted to work time.
However, just moments ago when I was tossing and turning like a tornado in my sheets, I had a calm yet overwhelming question take root: ‘What do you actually need right now?’
‘What do you actually need right now?’
What do YOU actually need. Right now.
Aside from my melatonin, and a good night’s sleep, I need permission to not know what’s coming next. I need permission to sound bad, goofy, to ask possibly ignorant questions out of a pure and innocent desire to learn and see and know and understand.
Aside from my melatonin and good night’s sleep, I need space to get it wrong. I need time to waste. I need a clock ticking rapidly towards 1, 1:30, 2am, knowing that my whole world will remain intact if I fub my sleep schedule for a day or two.
Aside from my melatonin and a good night’s sleep, I need to let myself off of the ever-moving, never-stopping, smoke-and-mirrors hook of perfectionism. I need to look out, to the you’s of the world, probably struggling with your own inner critics late at night. I need to look out to the you’s of the world, instead of trying to fit myself into some ‘me’ version that I think I need to be. What my perfectionism was/is trying to ‘save’ me from, has turned out to be dangerous antisocial tendencies rooted in that four letter word: fear.
What do I actually need right now? I need to bask. To bake. To breathe. To bend and flex and walk and lounge. I need to just look out to the you’s of the world and ask: What do you actually need right now?’
I need to sit and stare in wonder and find the nooks and naves and poke holes in the ozone with my songs, as a kid might scratch at the earth and make friends with bugs.
The perfectionist’s nightmare is waking up to a book of self and society prescribed rules and regulations, and burning it cover to cover, one middle-of-the-night minute at a time.