I heard it so many times in my childhood…”You could be SO smart if you wanted to.” or “If you’d only APPLY yourself, you could make straight A’s”
I heard it as a teen. “You can do anything you want to do.” or worse.
Does anyone realize that telling a child “You can do anything, be anything” can be overwhelming to the point of depression? ESPECIALLY if that child is a perfectionist?
My mother would laugh at that notion. “My daughter, perfectionist? You must be mistaken.” She thinks I’m a slob, and I am to some extent. I had to stop doing things completely and totally, and then re-build my skillset from the bottom up. Why? Because I got paralyzed by my tendencies. I would start something, realize it would never get *done*, get depressed and walk away leaving a mess 90% of the time.
I tried to think back to when I got like this. My first recollection is…..in kindergarten. Yes, that’s right–5 years old. Our class project was to make a Christmas collage of all the things we wanted. My first problem with the project - finding pictures of the things I wanted. Second problem? Yup, you guessed it! Making a collage involves….putting things closely together, sometimes on top of one another with no rhyme or reason to it. At the end of craft time, my sheet of art paper had a picture of a Mickey Mouse (r) telephone and nothing else. “Oh, you must be mistaken, you can’t remember what happened when you were 5 years old!” you say as you read it, but I have proof. Mom saved it in my baby book.
Go to college and get a degree. Easy enough, right? Only…there’s this nice BIG book full of interesting-sounding classes. Choose? That’s a joke, right? And when exactly do I have to declare a major? How can I declare when I want to do it ALL!!
Dust the living room? Sure! Let me go over this bookcase…no, wait. The shelf BEHIND the books is dusty. Take the books off the shelf, dust the shelf and put the books back. No, wait. As long as the books are off the shelf, let’s categorize them properly. Rinse and repeat. At my worst point, it took me 8 hours to clean a 2′ x 18″ bookshelf because I couldn’t decide how to re-order the books. Alpha by author? Dewey decimal (grandma would be so proud)? Alpha by title? Order by popularity? I tried them all, and none worked. And heaven help me, when I moved down to the shelf below that one, I realized I had to pull *all* the books off the entire bookshelf in order to wipe them down and re-organize. When I looked at the clock again, I realized I couldn’t keep doing that.
Laundry is agonizing for me. It’s never *done* with 3 children. “No shit, shirley” you say as you laugh behind your hand or spit coffee on your monitor. As a child I was taught that Thursday is Laundry Day. You wash 3 loads - whites, colors, and denims (hot warm and cold) and then fold and put away…and then you’re done til next week. HAH! I own a heavy-duty supersized washing machine and it’s full every day. Clothes, diapers, towels, the works.
Oh, you should take medication! You have OCD! I’ve heard it so many times it isn’t funny. No, I DON’T have OCD. I have the *potential* to be OCD…right now I’m just half a bubble off. At this point, the side effects of any medications would FAR outweigh the benefits.
*pant pant pant*
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