I began researching signs of an over-tidier.
I started watching myself at home.
Can I go from point A to B, without pausing to put something back in its place? A place for everything and everything in its place.
But this is how I create a calm and a peaceful environment for me and my family, I justified.
Their look tells me otherwise.
Maybe it’s just for me. My reset, my order, my perfectionist path to calm. But why doesn’t it feel calm anymore?
What’s underneath coming up for air?
What is perfectionism my mask for?
If I’m perfect, I can never be hurt.
A child’s logic lingering through adulthood. The sleeves of a coping mechanism now much too short.
A desire to please, to be good.
A yearning to become emotionally safe.
It’s enough now. Now, I know I am good; good enough. Great enough. Perfectionism no longer the cure, no longer the problem. I, no longer the problem.
Instead, I become the advocate my child self wanted. Her champion, not with the power to stop the occurrence, but to remove herself from involvement.
To erect her castle of emotional safety. To dive out from the protected shores of perfectionism, into the swaying, soothing flow.
Happy, not perfect.
Safe, now serene.
