Can’t ever seem to get rid of the bitch.
Perfect Me™ is omniscient; she knows everything, past, present, and future. Can’t take that risk, Perfect Me™ (PM) knows it’ll fail.
Something fucked up? Hey, PM had her doubts, knew it was a bad idea, but I just had to go ahead and try. If I’d only listen to PM, I’d never fail at anything.
Perfect Me™ is omniscient; she knows everything, past, present, and future. Can’t take that risk, Perfect Me™ (PM) knows it’ll fail.
Something fucked up? Hey, PM had her doubts, knew it was a bad idea, but I just had to go ahead and try. If I’d only listen to PM, I’d never fail at anything.
I might never DO anything, either, of course.
Perfect Me™ has a grasp that is forever beyond reach. If I bake a cake and it doesn’t slump to mush in the middle, then the frosting is gluey, or the edges are overcooked, or there isn’t enough vanilla in it.
On a day when I do three loads of laundry, balance the checking account, churn out a project for a client and write and post a blog post, I go to bed feeling defeated because I didn’t get the perennials cut back in the front garden. Perfect Me™ would have done all that AND cooked a nice dinner.
Perfect Me™ is never vulnerable (how can you possibly be vulnerable when you’re perfect?) PM can’t ask for help or accept offered help gracefully. Even doing anything that might indicate a need for help is right out. But PM is most gracious about helping others, who, after all, are not Perfect. The bitch secretly loves a parade.
But we can’t enjoy the appreciation of others because that would not be humble and being humble is Perfect.
Schizophrenic?
Oh, yeah, the bitch is out there.
Think about that for a few minutes. Perfect Me™ must be, at all times and in all ways, competent, intelligent, gracious, generous, and humble.
The Steps are poison to Perfect Me™. Like garlic, to a vampire. When the bitch has made my life particularly unbearable, I can use them to back her off, if I remember.
She’s always trying to make me forget, though. I can boot her out, waving Step Four or Step One or Step Ten in her face, following her cringing, hissing progress out the door, then slamming it behind her, but the bitch always sneaks back in. She lurks unobtrusively, toxic emanations slowly building up.
She slithers into the space between weariness and unrealistic expectations, and fastens her fangs into my jerkbrain, her willing collaborator. I’m so accustomed to this, that it always takes me by surprise. The pain builds, the anxiety accumulates, but like someone with peripheral neuropathy failing to realize they’re too close a heat source until the burns are acute, it’s too late, the damage is done.
The bad news? She’ll never leave for good.
The good news? The “garlic” keeps working.
Perfect Me™ has a grasp that is forever beyond reach. If I bake a cake and it doesn’t slump to mush in the middle, then the frosting is gluey, or the edges are overcooked, or there isn’t enough vanilla in it.
On a day when I do three loads of laundry, balance the checking account, churn out a project for a client and write and post a blog post, I go to bed feeling defeated because I didn’t get the perennials cut back in the front garden. Perfect Me™ would have done all that AND cooked a nice dinner.
Perfect Me™ is never vulnerable (how can you possibly be vulnerable when you’re perfect?) PM can’t ask for help or accept offered help gracefully. Even doing anything that might indicate a need for help is right out. But PM is most gracious about helping others, who, after all, are not Perfect. The bitch secretly loves a parade.
But we can’t enjoy the appreciation of others because that would not be humble and being humble is Perfect.
Schizophrenic?
Oh, yeah, the bitch is out there.
Think about that for a few minutes. Perfect Me™ must be, at all times and in all ways, competent, intelligent, gracious, generous, and humble.
The Steps are poison to Perfect Me™. Like garlic, to a vampire. When the bitch has made my life particularly unbearable, I can use them to back her off, if I remember.
She’s always trying to make me forget, though. I can boot her out, waving Step Four or Step One or Step Ten in her face, following her cringing, hissing progress out the door, then slamming it behind her, but the bitch always sneaks back in. She lurks unobtrusively, toxic emanations slowly building up.
She slithers into the space between weariness and unrealistic expectations, and fastens her fangs into my jerkbrain, her willing collaborator. I’m so accustomed to this, that it always takes me by surprise. The pain builds, the anxiety accumulates, but like someone with peripheral neuropathy failing to realize they’re too close a heat source until the burns are acute, it’s too late, the damage is done.
The bad news? She’ll never leave for good.
The good news? The “garlic” keeps working.