Can't Be Perfect.

I can’t speak for anyone else’s life, but regarding myself, I feel as though I may spend entirely too much energy convincing myself that I lead this “perfect” life, when in all reality, there are a lot of aspects about my life I don’t love. Now, there’s a fine line between what I would call this pursuit of convincing myself of perfection – and choosing to be optimistic and happy about my life. I’m a become proponent of leading an optimistic life. I have been through the whole depressed (teenager) phase, and it’s not an alleyway of life that I’d like to find myself going down again. What’s more, I find that it’s simply a better use of my time to focus on the good, the happy, the positive – and to set myself up to operate under a mindset of what I can change in order to make life better, versus moping about what I do not like. I value action so much. When I am distressed, I find myself loathing talks sometimes… they seem so useless. Like, I could be spending this time doing instead of speculating. Talk is nice, but what can we do to fix this now? Activity and action are such a comfort to me. That makes me a bad, inpatient conversationalist sometimes. That makes me harsh sometimes, because I demand action from those I love to ease my own distress. Just ask my husband – it’s not always easy to be around me. And I feel bad about that sometimes, but just find myself thinking that it’s so easy to get caught up and feel helpless in this world where so much is out of your control. That sometimes – it’s simply soothing to focus on what I’m not helpless to change.

But still – it’s so easy to fall into that “wanting to be perfect” trap! It’s all too easy to screen your life through social media, taking photos of the good times, occasionally being “candid” about the things we don’t like as much, gleaming important lessons through these things for the sake of being open and real to an audience, but still reluctant to share the real things about us that make us feel insecure. Man, if I had a dollar for every one of those things, I’d never have to gripe about not having insulin again. This is something I’d like to improve about my own life, but again, I can’t speak for anyone else’s. I just think that we’d save a lot more energy if we were more honest and open with ourselves. Looking at my own life, I can find prime examples of this.

My life isn’t always glamorous. Newsflash – no one’s is. And we shouldn’t stress about it not being that way. And as a result, I get cranky, I snap at people, sometimes I get mean. I get human. I love visiting new places with my husband, going on adventures, but you don’t see the times I tiredly get home after working 10 hour shifts and then I get cranky with my husband and myself as I try and clean for the next two hours muttering about how I clean all the time.

I’m convinced every girl has these thoughts - yeah: Sometimes, I don’t like my weight. Or how I look. I'm constantly comparing myself to others and it makes me unhappy. I’m happier with where I am now – but I used to be a lot skinnier, and with being on insulin, sometimes it’s just really hard to lose weight. Or maybe it’s just me, and insulin doesn’t have as big of a role in it as I would like? Do I like to cast blame on that? That’s an ugly part of me I confront a lot. My husband brought me home a burrito once and I irritatedly asked him to make me a sandwich because I didn’t want to eat the burrito.

I’m 23 and I still spell sandwich wrong way more than I should. And restaurant.

I like to talk about my accomplishments because I’m proud of everything I’ve fought to do. But damn, if I don’t feel like it sometimes makes me a worse person. The kind that forgets to call people enough or reply to texts or have the energy to chat with them when we’re hanging out.  The kind that neglects personal growth or relationships with others in exchange for having a full schedule and trying to climb the success ladder. My ambition gets in the way a lot. The tired days when I feel stretched way too thin because I’ve worked 7 gigs but still have a 54-60 hour work week ahead of me interning. The times when I’m on my phone but shouldn’t be because Kris is trying to have a conversation with me. Sometimes, I need to learn to put the work away and just focus on the now and the people around me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for the work, but a lot of me seems way too caught up on trying to accomplish things, to hang successes on my “mental” wall. It lets things slip through the cracks on accident sometimes. The other side of the coin I get lazy after working a lot and end up procrastinating on assignments, or not calling customers quite on time., or being late to things I said I’d be on time for.  Life is just hectic!

My walk with God – I forget to trust him all the time. I rely on myself too much. Don’t like to give up control of my life. I’m stubborn. Kris and I are now (thankfully) getting back in the habit of going to weekly church. Not just podcasts. It’s good for us.

My internship has got me down a lot this semester because I’ll be honest: A lot of the time I just don’t feel good enough, or smart enough, or charismatic enough to be a good PT. Sometimes I see patients and I’m trying to treat them and I have no idea what to do. The stakes are higher when you’re dealing with real people. Sometimes they tell you stories so sad you go home and sit in silence just thinking about the weight of those words. Sometimes you feel like you’re never going to get there, you’re never going to be that good. Sometimes I feel like I’m not making a big enough difference, especially with difficult chronic pain patients, and I feel as though all my schooling has gone to waste. Did I choose right? Am I in the right profession? Will I be satisfied with it? Is it truly my calling? Maybe it’s healthy to constantly question things. Maybe. I’ve questioned all of these things in my pursuit of finding career fulfillment.

And Diabetes… that’s the worst of all. I want to you to think that I’m in control. I want to be. But I’m so insecure and bad at the Diabetes thing somedays. Somedays, I let my blood sugar run high… sometimes I just don’t care enough. I let it run high for two weeks recently. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I’m too tired to deal with it somedays. Yes, I know the complications that can be a result. But burnout is a real and unfortunate thing that all of us diabetics succumb to sometimes. The insulin store in my fridge is getting lower than it’s ever been and I need to figure out how to get more soon. But part of me is afraid to go see someone for it because what if they yell at me? Tell me I’m irresponsible because I haven’t seen a doctor in over 2 years now? No insurance – no time. Fear and disappointment over knowing I likely can’t afford a visit and the monthly insulin anyways. Maybe I just didn’t order my priorities correctly these last few years, and I should have tried harder to get insulin.

Bottom line – none of us, least of all me, are the perfect person, the perfect wife, the perfect worker bee or student, the perfect Christian, or diabetic, or whatever you may be. We all have slip ups time to time, and they can be extremely irritating. I think it’s good to take step back and focus on the bad along with the good sometimes though. Healthy for us. Helpful to remind us how to become better people and prioritize what we want to change.