If only you could see how many hours I put into starting one of these blogs…..

I probably could have cured cancer now.

This section of my blog was supposed to be a way for me to share my thoughts with a public audience, but I was still scared of disappointing people. So far, as far as I’ve discovered, the biggest part of my anxiety is messing up. I was raised by a certain standard, and now I hold myself to a near-impossible level of perfection. Let’s visit the past and see how the pressures of giftedness and perfection fell upon some unsuspecting elementary school children.

I went to many elementary schools, but the one I remember best is Dudley G/T Magnet Elementary School. “G/T Magnet” was a term used to describe schools with programs for gifted and talented students (academically gifted, that it). In this program, my friends and I took on extra classes, advanced classes, and dozens of extracurriculars, on top of activity-ridden after-school lives. Time and time again, our teachers told us how advanced we were, how smart we were, and how much we were capable of. This made us feel special, but it also built us with a need to be perfect.

Middle School and High School weren’t any better. Placed in advanced classes with older kids, I was marveled at like a monkey in a zoo. I was asked how I was so good at math, why I liked math, and what I planned to do in my future (since I was so good at math). It felt like I was being placed on an imaginary academic pedestal. The girl with good grades, advanced class, several outside activities, a job, a boyfriend, and a life.

Well, little do you know, that girl doesn’t have a life. That girl is staying up until the crack of dawn to maintain those grades. That girl is completely lost. That girl is dealing with a Severe Anxiety Disorder due to her built-in perfectionism.

I know this sounds like a lot of complaining. “Oh, the girl with everything is complaining because one thing didn’t go her way….blah blah blah.” I understand these are “first-world” problems, but they hurt. There are so many things I never tried because I was deathly-terrified of messing up.

We are always told about the pressures of perfectionism. We are always told that mistakes are ok. We aren’t always told how trying hard for too long will ruin us. We aren’t always told that repetitively turning small mistakes into major disasters will ruin your health, mentally and physically. Perfectionism is one of the worst traits someone could have.

It’s really too bad that it’s built in to my core.