Dear diary, I have a confession to make…

I’m recovering from perfectionism.

I’m growing up.

- Me, March 21, 2025 (9:16 PM)

I sat at my desk reading the email: We regret to inform you that you haven’t been chosen for valedictorian this time (as if I’d have another chance at high school valedictorian).

My dad asked me how I was doing and I said I wasn’t bothered. My school had too many students to pick one valedictorian, so all eligible students had to fill out an application. My essays were good. My reference put crowns upon my head and my gpa scores were perfect.

I had done well.

I just wasn’t the best choice.

My heart and mind were okay with this. Yet, the minute I told my dad that it wasn’t bothering me, I felt ashamed. As if I should have been bothered. As if my level of stress properly depicted my potential for success.

That’s when I realized: my perfectionism had become my aesthetic.

I have always been one to love doing well.

I was marked at the top of my class when I studied ballet in France. My schoolwork is always done early. My room is organized. I’m rarely late to anything (and if I am, I regret it for days). You get the idea.

But it wasn’t until a few years ago that I began to define myself as a perfectionist.

I started smiling bashfully when people complimented my work ethic, saying, “Oh, that’s just the perfectionist in me.” My OCD tendencies became something I took pride in and my desire for order, control, and predictability became my personality.

Somehow I’m just now realizing the mistake I made.

I let perfectionism become my aesthetic.

Instead of trying to overcome my excessive desire for perfection, control, and success, I started to enjoy it.

Somewhere along the lines, perfectionism became more than the tears I spent over self-critical behavior, the hours I wasted tearing out journal pages because my handwriting wasn’t right, the stress-induced illness, emotional fatigue, and frustration that have worn my mind and body down.

Perfectionism became my “vibe.” It became the air I walked, the pride I carried. To me, being a perfectionist was being responsible, being mature, being the closest I could be to my fullest potential.

Now that I’ve majored in psychology for the past two years, I know my mistake: I made the problem the cure.

Desiring excellence is not bad. Being unsatisfied without perfection is unrealistic, exhausting, and dangerous. The bitter reality is that perfectionism hasn’t ever improved my ability…it has only increased my stress.

The odd thing is, now I know what needs to change…but part of me doesn’t want to change it.

With all the hours I have spent studying the human mind, I have noticed slow, but steady, growth in my own attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors. I’m becoming the person I hope to help others become when I finish my counseling studies.

I’m maturing. I’m finally growing up.

But growing up means letting go of some of the things I’ve inappropriately attached to myself. And it has turned out to be harder than I expected it to be.

When I was sixteen, I struggled with anxiety. Now, I’ve mellowed out. I still stress about life sometimes, but I think more critically, rationally, and patiently. Even still, when someone asks how I feel about a potentially stressful event, my instinct is to say, “I’m a little stressed out,”…even if I’m not stressed out.

When I was seventeen, I had a hard time reigning in my inner truth-teller and spent a lot of time complaining about faults I saw in everything. Now, my spirit is a bit more patient…but I still feel the need to express any distasteful observance of the world around me.

As for perfectionism, I know I’m not perfect…and I have grown to be okay with that. But I still feel uncomfortable admitting it.

Why?

Why do I hesitate from letting myself mature? Why do I hold myself in this cage of childish ways when I have unraveled secrets of the grown-up world, the wise, and the respectable?

Because I made them my aesthetic.

I made them me.

And now it is awkward for them not to be.

I let myself walk circles in a cage of my own creation because I told myself these chains were a part of being human, real, raw, authentic. And, for a while, they were. There were days where my anxiety was crippling or my perfectionism led to hours of wasted time.

But those are not the days I live in anymore.

Those days are dying…have died.

And I’m left to process the pieces of myself that are now buried in the ground.

I’m finding that you don’t often realize you have matured until you are sitting at the grave of your immaturities.

It is an odd place to be.

When I realized that my perfectionism was dying, I panicked. It wasn’t a slow death, the wearisome kind where you watch a loved one fade as you hold their hand for days, weeks, months. No, this was the unexpected kind.

The kind where you get a text on your phone and realize time’s up. The kind where you find yourself suddenly surrounded by hospital monitors, ears rushing with the beeping and chaos and screeching before being hushed into eternal silence.

The thing about death is that it changes you. You’re never quite the same after you’ve watched something familiar disappear into a distant, faraway place that you can’t reach.

It took me a few days to process this “death” of my perfectionism. I had to think about what it meant to not be a perfectionist. Or, at least, to be less of one.

Does it mean not being self-motivated?

Does it mean not being responsible?

Does it mean not being mature?

In the end, what I discovered, is that losing perfectionism actually heals me more than it hurts me.

I don’t need to be perfect to be driven. I don’t need to be perfect to do well in school, life, relationships, etc. I don’t need to be obsessed with perfection to strive for excellence.

Even knowing this, it is awkward, for some odd reason, to live out newfound maturity. There are so many things I know in my mind, but hesitate displaying in my life. Because it feels strange to present yourself as different than the day before, it is awkward to feel different, to be different.

But it is good.

It is worth doing.

I was thinking about all of these things last night. Struggling between the balance of what was and what is and what it all means.

As I was about to drift asleep, the words came to me: you’re allowed to grow up.

I’m allowed to grow up.

I’m allowed to change and adapt and grow as I go. Part of letting perfectionism go is learning to be at peace with not reaching a destination. It’s realizing that life isn’t all about goals or stepping stones to your ideal self; it’s a journey to the Homeland of rest and refuge and restoration.

Maybe growing up doesn’t always mean carving out the magic from your soul. Maybe — just maybe — growing up can be a way of letting your dreams expand, like a falling star becoming a magical island resting in the middle of a galaxy. Maybe growing up isn’t letting your soul die, but entering another adventure.

-Kara Swanson, Dust

Like every pilgrim, I’m going to have to pick up new rules and ideas and behaviors, letting go of old ones, as I go. And that’s okay. Because I’m not just a pilgrim, I’m a poet. And the poet knows this journey—this growing up—isn’t about being perfect. It’s about picking up and letting go.

Pick up one new lesson at this bend, let go of one old lesson at the next one. Plant one new belief here, uproot one you no longer trust in there.

We’re meant to adapt and change.

We’re supposed to grow up.

And part of growing up is letting the dying things die.

For me, at this part of the journey, it’s perfectionism.

And it feels strange to lay the burden down. It feels unnatural to walk around without the weight. But it is healing. I can stand a little taller. I can offer more strength to help another weary pilgrim. I can wander farther and longer and deeper into the heart of God.

So this article is my informal eulogy to perfectionism. I will lay it like a bouquet of flowers upon its grave. And when I’ve said all the words I have to say, I will stand up, I will walk away, I will let it die.

I won’t always lack perfectionism. I will still carry bits and pieces of its memory in my frame.

But I will not let it be my aesthetic. I will not let it be me.

I will grow up and be okay.

Because our struggles aren’t our aesthetic.

And in case you’ve been wondering…you’re allowed to grow up too. You can bury the dying things.

You can let it go. ♡