The Problem With Being Perfect

    

      I read a Facebook article recently that said, “We live in a culture that makes kids think that if they’re not perfect, they’re less than good.”  Just let that sink in for a moment. What ever happened to just doing your best? What happened to it’s not who wins, it’s how you play the game? What happened to the value of just being a good, kind, and loving person? 

     Teenage suicide is at an all time high.  Usually the reason being is that kids are under too much pressure to succeed and they don’t want to disappoint their parents or teachers or peers.  Or they are being bullied on social media. Or, God Forbid, they are born gay and their parents are religious zealots who won’t accept them. Teenage depression is something that’s not addressed enough because for some reason it is shameful. What 16 year old is going to admit that they are sad and insecure all the time? What 16 year old is going to admit he or she is gay in a culture where we are still debating conversion therapy?  What 16 year old is going to tell their parents they don’t want to play sports anymore even though they are a star athlete? Their brains are not fully developed enough for them to even comprehend the scope of these emotions. I know, because I was there.

     When I was 14 years old, I begged my mom to take me to a modeling agency. I wanted so badly to be an actress, and to be pretty and thin and to fit in.  She finally gave in and when we got there, they told me to lose 20 pounds and come back. I was 5’5” and weighed 115. Thin, but apparently too fat to be a model. Thus began a 10 year cycle of eating disorders: binging, purging, starvation, extreme exercise, and an unhealthy relationship/obsession with food that has continued, on a less severe level,  even into my adult years. My parents didn’t understand what was wrong with me, and why I couldn’t control it. I told no one, not even my closest friends. I sunk into a deep depression, so bad that I would pretend to be sick so I could miss school. Finally, when Karen Carpenter died in 1983 from complications of anorexia, I confronted my mom and told her I needed to see a therapist. I had to ask for help in an era where adults, let alone children, never talked about mental illness and anyone who went to a “shrink” was just plain crazy. Turns out, after a few months of therapy, the disorder wasn’t really about my body image after all.  It was about me being an overachiever, me being a people pleaser, me comparing myself to other people and thinking I wasn’t enough. It was about extreme anxiety. It was about the pressure my parents and teachers put on me to keep up my good grades. I was in the top 3 in my class, with a GPA of 4.6.  Something any parent would be proud of, and don’t get me wrong, my parents and teachers were proud. It’s just that whenever I made a choice that didn’t seem to coincide with what “smart people do”, all I felt was the weight of their disappointment.  I didn’t take AP English my senior year because I was tired of writing essays,  and you would’ve thought I’d dropped out of school. I didn’t do as well on my SATs as hoped, and they all wondered if I was getting enough sleep or doing drugs. I took my ACTs twice and got a perfect score the 2^nd time around. Not perfect enough for a scholarship. I was promised a full ride to any college in the country by my guidance counselor, but turns out my parents made too much money and I didn’t play sports and those SAT scores were not quite up to par.  Twelve years of being told I was brilliant, only to find out that I was not brilliant enough.  Off to CU I went, instead of Pepperdine or UCLA or Stanford, (not that CU is a bad school, but it wasn’t what I wanted for myself), and once I got there I enrolled into a very laid back liberal arts program. I didn’t bust my ass because I was tired of busting my ass and not getting rewarded. And even though I still graduated with honors, even though I was a Dean’s Scholar and had a 3.8 GPA, I could feel the disappointment like a heavy rain cloud all around me.  My parents and high school teachers couldn’t believe I didn’t continue to excel in math and science and become an engineer (really, can you see me as an engineer?), and they couldn’t fathom why I had turned into this artsy fartsy liberal.  I wondered why they all just couldn’t support what I wanted to do. I was good at a lot of things, not just math and science, and I was especially good at the “artsy-fartsy stuff”.  It wasn’t what they wanted and in turn it made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. It turned into a lifetime of therapy for me, but guess what? The therapy has helped immensely. Who knows how I would’ve turned out if I hadn’t gotten the help and support I needed. I am not ashamed. 

     Fast forward to 2019. I thought I had it bad.  Kids these days are under so much pressure it’s a wonder they don’t just combust.  It’s a wonder how they get it all done.  In order to be recognized it seems they have to not just excel in every aspect of their lives, including sports, but they also have to be the best. Second or third place is not good enough. It seems to me like kids spend more time on the athletic field than they do in school, and I guess that ironically explains why the athletes get the scholarships that I didn’t get (yes, I’m still bitter).  Cheerleading and Pom-Poms have become competitions between gymnasts and dancers that are downright dangerous, where back in my day you just had to smile big and kick your legs in unison. Sports and cheerleading and music and band used to be extracurricular activities, not indicators of self-worth.  

     I watched a documentary, or maybe it was a book I read, about Andre Agassi. Do you know he didn’t even really like tennis? It was all about his Dad wanting him to play. And what about the athletes that do steroids and end up disappointing everyone? Did we ever stop to think they did the steroids because they don’t want to disappoint everyone? I’m not defending their actions, but these are people that have been told all their lives that winning is the only thing that makes them worthy.  The parents that have recently been arrested for bribing their children’s way into college? Shameful, despicable, illegal- yet on the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t have to be a combination of Albert Einstein and Serena Williams to get into college. 

      Most kids at one point in their life are going to be sullen and angsty. Hormones are running rampant, peer pressure is something that will never go away, and rebellion, to a certain extent, is normal.  What’s not normal is a child that does a sudden 180 in the middle of their junior year. What’s not normal is a seemingly happy go lucky teenage girl who jumps off a bridge. What’s not normal are parents and teachers and peers who can’t just love kids for who they are.  Fat, thin, gay, straight, smart, struggling, pretty, awkward, artsy, geeky, clumsy, talented or not, funny, loving, sad, anxious….whatever they may be, they are children. They need love, they need someone to wrap their arms around them and tell them they are loved. They need someone to tell them they are perfectly imperfect. Tell them they will turn out just fine, because they will, as long as they are loved for exactly who they are. That’s what I needed, and knowing that now, I do my best to love everyone unconditionally. I’m not saying we should spoil them rotten, because I believe that has led us to this culture of (some) entitled millennials. I’m not saying don't discipline them; kids should be disciplined, just not unloved.  I’m saying be proud of them even if they get third or last place, encourage them to do whatever they want to do, even if it’s artsy fartsy, love them even when they’re being little sh*ts-especially then, because deep down they are probably suffering from something they are afraid to talk about. Most of all, don’t be ashamed to get them help. And don’t be ashamed of failure. Their’s or your’s, because as a wise man once said, “In great attempts it is glorious even to fail”.

Peace, Love, and Namaste,

Sunnie