Diary Opened

April 11th 2020

I'm very good at distracting myself. I've learned if I can keep my brain running a million miles an hour I don't have any issues. I don't know what I'm afraid of. What I'm scared to find in my own mind if given the time. I pushed myself into the depths of meditation and within five minutes tears were running down my face. I had been forced to analyze myself. I stared at my glassy eyed reflection in the mirror and couldn't figure out why I didn't feel like enough. Why was I not enough? For my family, for my ex, for myself. My own mind was the most dangerous critic as I tried to figure out what triggered all the stress and anxiety that lay upon my knotted shoulders. As it turns out I put it there. I'd always known I was a perfectionist in art but I never realized where else that trait popped up. As my mind wondered I realized fear of failing drove me extreme lengths to achieve perfection and that fear and anxiety which kept me "perfect" also weighed on my shoulders and helped a fear emerge within my own mind. I can see it everywhere now. The fear of failing through driving, through tests, through athletics I employ a fear in order to help me achieve near perfection in exchange for crippling anxiety and a fear that at any moment it could all be over. Sometimes I tempt myself wondering what would happen if it all came crumbling down, try to prove to myself I am capable of failing by letting someone else win or trying low ball an exam. Maybe I do it in hopes that it will ease some of the tension so I won't have to constantly distract my mind out of fear that it will succumb to terrors of anxiety my body has accrued in this race for perfection. Ironically I never knew that I wanted to be perfect, in a way that's still not my goal but being driven by a fear of failure is just as lethal. And I don't know what to do about it. I've cried the tears. This is the ugly truth I can't unsee after and forcefully called my brain to come to a rest, I've opened the can of worms but now I don't know how to cope. Am I supposed to cope? How do I become okay with being flawed?