COLUMN: You are perfect the way you are now
September is my favorite time of the year. I love the smells and the feeling of September, the cool breeze in the mornings and the still-lingering warm summer air in the evenings. I also secretly love September because of the guessing game we play while getting dressed in the morning. I am sure many know what I am talking about – you look out the window and anticipate a cold day so naturally you dress in a long-sleeve sweater and jeans, only to regret it by the time you get to campus: roasting because by then the sun has come out and it is going to be a warm day after all, and you bitterly look around you to see all the people who got it right that morning who got to sport their shorts and flip-flops one more day.
With September also come good memories. While growing up, rainy fall days meant family time. On rainy days my mom would lets us stay inside and watch TV, which was rare for us back then. We would have what she would call “noche de pelicula,” or “movie nights.”
On those nights she would make us children hot chocolate and her and my father coffee. Sometimes if I was lucky, my mom would let me take a sip from her coffee, which was the ultimate reward because it meant I was growing up. The whole family would then gather around the floor in front of our TV with blankets, pillows and warm drinks to watch the movie we had voted on. I usually wanted to watch something about puppies, but I was always outvoted by my two brothers and we would watch “Power Rangers” for the 20th time. Those were fun times – innocent times – that so many years later I would come to treasure because they helped me understand what it felt like to belong and feel loved.
Throughout the years I have come to learn that our experiences can have such a deep impact on our feelings of belonging and self worth.
Our experiences with others are one way we learn what if feels like to be loved and accepted, or the opposite; unwanted and rejected. Our experiences then lead us to formulate stories about who we are and give meaning to our experiences. The stories we adopt help us explain our world; who we trust, where we belong, our self-worth and even our identity. The therapist in me acknowledges that not everyone thinks or feels the way I do and that it is just one way of looking at things, but for me it makes sense: It’s the story I tell myself to explain the world around me. I also recognize that sometimes we accept flawed stories as our truth.
I have come to realize that many of us, including myself, may struggle from time to time with the story of feeling and believing that we are not good enough.
I believe that that is the byproduct of living in a society that is obsessed with editing and photoshopping and perfection. Somehow we have come to accept the lie that perfection is attainable, and that imperfection is bad, and if we could just make ourselves perfect we would be happier, live fuller lives worthy of love and acceptance. We then figure that we are the only ones who have not figured out how to be perfect and we compare the worst version of ourselves with the perfect story we have formulated of someone else, and it leaves us empty inside and feeling like we have to cover our imperfections. If anyone saw or knew who we really were, it would sometimes be too unbearable to even think about. From there we may even begin to add to our story and believe that because we are not yet perfect, we are by default not lovable, and not worthy of belonging and love.
If we accept perfection as our ultimate goal we will forever be fighting an uphill battle, and to that I say enough.
I want to change my story and be OK with imperfection, and know and believe that I am lovable just as I am today. Who I am today is enough. I want to believe and know that I am smart enough, skinny enough, that my short little legs are enough, that the chub around my belly I’ve been fighting for years is fine and even beautiful, and most of all that I am lovable. We all are.
American scholar and public speaker Brene Brown said it best: “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of
love and belonging.” To that I would only add that you are worthy of love and belonging now. Today, as is.
– Jessica is a second-year student in the Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program at USU. She is a first-generation college student and the daughter of Mexican immigrants.