My life has been a series of perfection.

I was the perfect student.

My parents never had to ask me to do my work.

I did it

the second I got home from school.

When they suggested that

I study for an upcoming exam,

I told them I had already started to

two weeks ago.

Every single action was

calculated.

I did not speak,

I did not move,

I did not eat,

I did not breathe,

I did not live

without thinking everything out a million times over.

I needed to be absolutely perfect on the outside

because on the inside

I was drowning.

The spoon I had been using to measure my words and actions was

overflowing

at a rate that I could not keep up with.

By living my life using the calculation for perfection,

I had not realized that my spoon was no longer enough.

Too many words and thoughts had been scraped off

the top of that goddamn spoon and into the pit of my stomach.

All the bad and ugly

I had tried so desperately to rid myself of was still there,

filling up my lungs and choking me,

but it did not fit the measurement that I wanted

so I buried it.

Under pounds of makeup and clothes that I did not like,

emotions that I was not feeling,

thoughts that were not my own.

Yes,

my coffee spoon was always full,

but never full of me.