Ma, I Don’t Feel Well
I’ve seen men, women and brave-hearted children perish within the grip of cancer.
There have been mornings, far too many, when I’ve risen and grabbed my phone only to be saddened by news of an acquaintance from way back when passing in the night from a sudden heart attack.
Alzheimer’s doesn’t rip out the whole flower bed in front of the house all in one shot. It plucks a single tulip, then tiptoes off, then comes back the next day and the days after until all that remains is the impression across dry soil.
Diabetes, that damn tax collector, asks for no invitation. Its debts can only be managed, never settled.
The person suffering from multiple sclerosis is justified in scoffing at the warrior notion that pain is temporary weakness leaving the body.
If solid health is a gratifying stroll from artisan tent to fruit stand, then disease must be the choppy walk through an unpaved park.
Some choose not to divulge their ailments, particularly those chronic or even terminal in nature. We all have our alienable right to privacy, right? Well, it’s time I be forthcoming and transparent about my disease. I suffer from a condition which affects many worldwide. The scary thing is we can go our entire lives without diagnosis. Let some tell it, and the condition is a normal bull-headed personality trait in line with Camp Taurus. In my case, there came a point where denial and I could not be cast in the same sitcom, so now I am seeking out other script opportunities for the longevity of my career on and off screen. Some legacies were built upon it. Others never came to be because of it.
Plain and simple, I am stricken with perfectionism.
Ma, I said the p-word, there you have it!
I have such a high ideal of what my work and vision should look like that I suffer terribly if they don’t come to pass exactly as I drew them up during the brainstorm phase. I get angry. I wander through a moody valley. I compare my supposed mess to what I or others deem to be prevailing masterpieces. The disease affects my ability to collaborate with others. Indecision and endless drafts signify this journey. I cannot throw parties for my condition would not allow me to last long in the event planning sector.
Frankly speaking, it’s took me weeks to pick up where I left off when I began this piece for fear my words won’t come off right or that the little details will not penetrate my audience’s (if I even have one) force field of expectations.
Unfortunately, I live with a phobia that comes in the form of phantoms casting shadows at the foot of my bed in the night: I will die with the word incomplete stamped in dark ink on the files of my dearest projects and aspirations. Not because these visions were too lofty, but rather I never finished them due to self-imposed outcomes, or better yet, what those outcomes should be and how I will maneuver about if the goal fails to materialize.
Even now, I am a wreck! Yes, writing this, gritting my teeth as each black letter pops onto the white screen, attempting to explain what it’s like inside the stormy life of a helpless perfectionist, and those relentless voices yelling at me saying “You can do better…”
This disease is paradoxically both humorous and poignant. I laugh at the fact that my prescribed defense against failing is simply doing nothing at all. For those of us who are so engrossed in their insistence on projects, relationships, celebrations and even legacies being pristine, we sure do have a peculiar way of chasing immortality.
Where did this condition originate, and how did it find me? I’ve changed zip codes, careers and clothing, yet it’s well into my skin like a lotion. Is it genetic? Is it the byproduct of some very exact moment in time where failure was not listed among the possible answers of multiple choice, and it worried me sick?
My mother also is a perfectionist. Perhaps that is why we get along so well. We communicate in the form of sighs and choice phrases. I’ve written about her selflessness and uncanny attention to details in the past, but it’s worth examining the immense amount of pressure she heaps upon herself. She is everything to everybody at all hours, except captive to her pillow while others sleep softly at ease. Her holiday presentations have voices of their own that echo well after the calendar has left the decoration along the wall and glitter on the floor. The woman’s handwriting is immaculate. I can’t recall one subpar meal as a youth. People enlist her to bring a proposed mood to the interior of their homes, and after the job is “complete” I suspect she stands in a corner with a narrow eye fixated on one detail that didn’t turn out right. She’ll say it’s fine, but if I know anything that is apparent and true, it’s that one detail, which others may deem to be minor, that eats at her. As quick as I am to tell her to forget about something, I am just as prone to my own lasting dissatisfactions if a color is not the right shade, an adjective is not exact or pen smudges, with whatever I care to invest time on.
As my children have started to cement their own identities and ambitions, they probably believe me to be some sort of madman, a jazz record stuck on one note. It’s not out of the realm of possibility they’ve already grown tired of my rants and letters preaching on efficiency and far-out devotion to one’s craft.
In the same way that I’ve inherited fibers of my mother’s blight, traces of me show up in my daughter. She’s shown promise when painting in her spare time. As her art has progressed, the rigor by which she critiques herself on what becomes of the canvas is something I can’t help but relate to. Patience comes in the form of her being willing to take a break and then revisit the task with less self-imposed pressure. Contrarily, a work gets shoved across the table and groans of frustration occur when vision and current presentation are at odds. I tend to prescribe deep breaths and reassurance, yet how can I blame her when I’m often closed off to such advice in similar times of irritation?
Sadly, there is yet to be a definitive cure in the fight against perfectionism. As I alluded to earlier, its oddest side effect is the gradual breakdown of one’s drive to attempt an act or seeing an idea to its blissful end for fear that it won’t be up to snuff thus spurring rejection. To the perfectionist, exclusion is the ultimate death, the boogieman, the grimiest annihilation.
As much as I am debilitated by illness, I am just as much a dreamer. Any dreamer will tell you there is cause for hope.
I mentioned how I fretted over piecing my thoughts together to make one coherent stream of personal makeup. Yet I did something which may be the most powerful form of medication for someone in my predicament: I tried. More specifically, I tried for the sake of realizing that any honest action towards molding a more precise representation of the human condition is a saber worth forging in the furnace of everyday life.
Us lifelong perfectionists have come to accept we must still act knowing fully well that shit may go awry. We can’t promise ourselves that ink smudge on a greeting card or the butchering of a name during a recorded reading won’t bother us deep into our marrow. Did I mention there has yet to be a confirmed cure? We are learning to say F it, wearing the embroidered patch of enterprise right along our collarbone.
As I’m logging off, I’m imagining that I’m sitting in a circle, a support group of sorts in a well-lit pub−a sponsor reserved it for us. People of numerous shades, economic demographics and views are gathered around. The waiter starts with asking what we’ll drink, we all have different tastes. A few minutes later, our glasses arrive on a wooden tray, a solid well-crafted wood that has no concept of splintering. One lady, I’d say in her twenties and fizzing with ambition, raves about how this cherry beer on tap is to kill for. Then, as if all the lights hush to a dim and focus on one person alone, a man stands behind the circle. “You really like it?” he asks, sincerely. “I worked on that recipe for years, and it wasn’t until last week that I just threw it out there on the menu. It’s still not right, but if you say so…” This urban planner named Larry, who has never said a single word in our weekly meetings other than his name and hello, twists his torso and looks over at the beer guy. “Be patient with your brew,” Larry says, and his face returns back to its blank default. We scoot our chairs wide enough for the brewer to join the circle. Just about all of us talk well into the night, rattling off ideas, mishaps and moments when we supposedly stuck the landing. Another day down. What a night. Still alive.
