AW: Morning Blog 24

I've come to realize that my perfectionism is getting in my way again. I have ridiculously high standards for all of my creative work. I recognize it comes out of how I was gaslighted for 20+ years that the only thing acceptable was my best work. And even then, if the people who had been gaslighting me decided that the way I did it wasn't how they would have done it, my best work wasn't good enough. In short, I was told that my best was never good enough. They kept moving the goal posts on each accomplishment. As a result, I internalized this tendency to move the goal posts and keep striving for perfection in my first attempt.

This is not healthy for me on multiple levels. I am realizing that my perfectionism is a combination of a desperate attempt to win the approval of people who are no longer in the picture and fear that the rest of the world looks at me the same way.  I'm realizing that my perfectionism is a desperate effort to avoid being attacked for my work. It's painful to realize that I'm still so wounded by things that happened in my formative years that I work to avoid them.

When K. would "critique" my work, it wasn't usually at my request. She'd hold it up to a standard that was different from what my teachers expected. Failure to perform at K.'s preferred level brought me harassment, humiliation, and scorn. It wasn't just in my writing that this happened. The woman threw away a painting that I had worked on for a literal month at school saying that it looked like 'shit' because my colors blurred together. It was water color and I've never been great at keeping control over my paint with water color. But K. decided that because it didn't look like a photograph, it was worthless and threw it away right in front of me.

K. mocked me for my artwork. K. scorned me for my attempts to master anything musical. Mind you, when I took an interest in piano, K. got one and slapped up the Moonlight Sonata for me to play when I could barely read the notes and get the right keys. I gave up on piano after a month of K. telling me that my practicing was "inconsiderately loud". It was the same response that my attempt to learn violin got as did my efforts to learn how to play the recorder. There was never a good time for me to practice. Then I got verbally eviscerated for not performing better, for giving up on the instrument, or not practicing enough. Mind you, K. was always quick to undercut my efforts and I was damned if I tried to practice when K. wasn't around because K. would insist that  my practice time was just my screwing round and playing with the instrument.

The only time K. didn't give me grief for practicing was when I was in color guard with the marching band. I think that was because I was twirling around a flag on a piece of rebar and she wasn't sure what my reaction would be if she decided to try to rip it out of my hands and show me the 'right' way to do it. I have a tendency to be unpredictable when cornered.