I want to share something I wrote in March 2019. I wrote this reflecting back on my thoughts from a few years prior to that. I would word some things a lot differently now, but I want to share this as I wrote it in 2019. For example, I would no longer refer to that version of me as “hateable,” as I did then. But I think there’s power in not editing that as that’s how I felt at the time.
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How did I stop being a perfectionist? And how did I decide to truly start loving myself?
I hit rock bottom. No, really I did. Yes, really! Within 23 to 24 years of living, I hit rock bottom. (One version of it at least. Unfortunately, I’m sure there are a lot of other, different versions of rock bottom that I’ll undoubtedly hit.)
I became the most flawed, imperfect version of myself that the perfectionist in me would have hated and ripped to shreds. I became everything that I had spent a lifetime telling myself I should hate. I made horrible decisions, and to the perfectionist in me, I became a “horrible person.” It’s still hard to imagine a more “hateable version of myself.” No, honestly it’s just the truth.
And in that moment, I had to decide did I love that broken, defeated, failed, “hateable” version of myself. Did I love myself enough to put it all in the past and try again? To try to pick up my broken pieces? Or was I just going to stay at rock bottom? And the answer came like a small ember: I did love that broken, “hateable” version of myself. And yes I was worth loving even then. And I was more than that failure, even then, when I was in the middle of it.
This small ember of pure self-love was something I’d never had before. That ember has since grown into a roaring flame. It was hard to believe at first, hard to accept. It didn’t grow all at once. The answer took a while to come to. And it took a lot of pain and time to get where I am now.
I am still flawed, albeit far from rock bottom, and far from that “hateable version.” But countless people in countless ways have made me aware of my flaws, even just in the last few weeks and months, and very publicly at times. Most of them aren’t wrong about the flaws they say I have. Believe me, I know my flaws better than anybody. After all, I spent years listing them out over and over and dissecting every aspect of my personality, examining every possible shortcoming, and internalizing every perceived flaw others said I had. All I saw were my flaws.
But having flaws is okay. People telling me my flaws when done correctly and with the goal of helping me improve is okay. When done incorrectly and without the goal of helping me improve is not okay and is a reflection of them and not me. (I’m still working on this one. :))
I will never again seek perfection, only to improve a little bit every day and to try to be better each day. I will never again define myself by my flaws and my flaws alone. Nor will I let others define me by them.
I’m not perfect. I’m a good, flawed person trying to improve though. And that is something worth celebrating, and yes, that person is somebody worth loving—somebody worth me loving.
Photo courtesy of Dmitry Schemelev on Unsplash
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