Nope, something’s missing.

I need to get 100% on this.

What if I don’t do as well as I’d hoped?

It needs to be perfect.

These thoughts circled throughout my mind as I worked on the various things I overcommitted to. But there was no going back, right? I felt this uncontrollable need to put other people’s happiness in front of my own because I cared too much about what they thought. I left myself with little time to complete my personal tasks (which should have taken priority), which resulted in unnecessary stress. All my assignments and projects exquisitely organized in color-coded binders needed to be perfect. This is why I am my own worst enemy.

Rarely did I feel beautiful when I woke up in the morning; and I often got self-conscious about morning breath or how my hair looked. I realized that no one looks camera-ready immediately after waking up, but I could care less about his or her morning breath or messy hair. As for myself, I had this unexplainable desire to be some perfect entity that arose from the sheets every morning.

I often looked in the mirror and felt unsatisfied. It’s not that I was unhappy with my body or had wished I had another; it was simply because I knew there was so much more that I could do in order to make my legs thinner, or my stomach more well-defined. I constantly scrolled through photos of pretty, skinny girls on Instagram and contemplated eating less. When I went to the gym, I nearly worked myself to exhaustion, to the point at which I felt faint and dizzy. Nothing I seemed to do gave me the beautifully sculpted body that visited me in my dreams each night. I gazed at my gorgeous friends and forgot about the physical traits I was blessed with too. Because that’s just easy to do when you’re a perfectionist.

The insecurities that emanate with being a perfectionist are hard to explain because one would think they shouldn’t exist in the first place. They ate me alive and annoyingly reminded me that everything needed improvement. Pointing out flaws and offering up suggestions can be a great thing (depending on the subject), but other times it can cause avoidable stress and anxiety.

I wish it were simple to completely stop caring about what others think of me, about my looks, and about my grades. But the thing is, it’s not simple. Because if you asked me why I care so much, I would honestly say, I don’t know. My refusal to accept any standards short of perfection has always been my natural tendency.

Recently though, I have held myself accountable to a personal promise: To appreciate more and embrace my imperfections. Although I continue to live with these minor insecurities, I realize that I’m a human being and I’m subject to fail. Throughout most of my life, I have feared failure, mistakes, and the abominable normal standard. Exceeding was all I ever trained myself to do. Little did I know that I was training myself to be something I wasn’t.

There is a poem written by Marianne Williamson titled “Our Deepest Fear” that relates to my situation better than any other piece of writing ever could. The first few lines say it all:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

The poem continues, and it explains how unrealistic our idea of perfect actually is. More often than not, we hide our true selves from the rest of the world, in fear of judgment, emotional harm, and ultimately failure. But if we simply unmask ourselves and let our light shine, the rest of the world benefits, because it gets to see who we really are.

Now that is beautiful.