It was my first day of preschool, and I was three. We all sat around a large rectangular folding table, about 10 boys and girls in total, waiting for class to begin. In the center of the table stood two clear plastic tubs full of stubby and wrapper-less crayons, their tips super-worn. Clearly, several generations of tots had scribbled with them. As I sat in the chair and pondered the sad state of the crayons, my nose began to tickle and it occurred to me that I had to sneeze. That’s when I panicked.
Am I allowed to sneeze? Is it allowed? Will I get in trouble? Oh my God, I’m going to die if I sneeze!
I’m not sure where or when I picked up this idea that I couldn’t sneeze in preschool—no one in my family ever scolded me for sneezing. But I was convinced, pathologically certain, that if I sneezed I would infuriate the teacher and be publicly shamed. With my eyes fixed on those crayons in a possessed stare, I concentrated all the power of mind on not sneezing. Somehow, it worked, and as I reveled in my ability to stop my own sneeze a faint achoo! come from the other side of the table. Jennifer, this ultra-feminine blonde who I already sort of hated because she was way prettier than me, had just sneezed. I shit you not.
“Bless you!” our teacher, a happy woman in her late 20s, said.
And that’s how I knew it was okay to sneeze in preschool. It’s the first memory I can muster of me wasting both time and energy trying to make sure I didn’t piss someone off when there was no evidence that the avoided action would piss anyone off in the first place. I wish I could say that I shed this kind of paranoid obsequiousness by 38 years of age (I just had a birthday, and it’s depressing me), but that’s just not true. When I enter new environments, workplaces or—as has recently begun happening—dating situations, I am as spookable and tentative as a doe—no one and no environment is deemed “safe” until proven otherwise.
Not long after the sneeze incident, I found myself in yet another spell of preschool-induced neuroticism.
We were making plates out of our own drawings. The teacher, whose name happened to be Tracy, handed out circular sheets of white paper along with colored felt pens. We had about an hour to draw something spectacular that would be fused between two discs of plastic to become a plate that would either horrify or enchant our parents, depending on our artistic skill and their sentimentality.
I decided I wanted to draw a happy face. First, I would draw the circle, then the eyes and mouth. I picked up a hot pink pen and drew the circle carefully and with slow precision. As I closed it up, I saw that it was lopsided, the line all crooked, the work not of a brilliant artist, but a toddler with yet-to-be-developed motor skills. This infuriated me. I was better than that. If I was going to draw a happy face, the happy face needed to be perfect.
So, I drew another one.
And another one.
And another one.
Those three were also unsightly and lopsided, and so I drew yet another one. At that point, I recall being internally conflicted. On one hand, I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere with the circles—all evidence suggested that I would not be able to draw one perfectly, since my multiple attempts to do so were failures. But I just couldn’t stop myself from trying again, despite all the evidence. It’s just like when I return to a shit relationship or when I used to relapse and think that somehow I would be able to control my drinking. Like an addict, I kept compulsively returning to the circle drawing, each time hopeful that I’d get it right, each time disappointed. Then I’d come back for another fix. It seemed I was physically incapable of stopping.
By the time 45 minutes had passed, the piece of paper was filled with at least 25 lopsided circles. That’s when Tracy came up to me to check in.
“What are you drawing?” she asked in a gentle but perplexed tone.
“Happy faces.”
She looked my drawing over slowly.
“But where are the eyes?”
“I’m waiting to draw a perfect circle.”
“There’s no such thing as a perfect circle,” she said, “it’s impossible to draw one. And we have to finish up now, so I’m going to help you.”
She grabbed an orange pen and started adding smiles to the circles, which really destroyed me on the inside, but I was too scared to tell her to stop, once again fearing public ridicule, so I let her destroy my plate.
“So while I draw these mouths you can add the eyes,” she said.
Reluctantly, I began scribbling. At three, my ability to draw eyes was as shabby as my ability to draw circles—I just drew big quarter-inch thick dots with a hot pink pen, no pupils or whites. The happy faces looked scary. Imagine eating off a plate where 20-plus crooked faces are staring up at you; not exactly appetizing.
“Great!” Tracy said merrily once I’d finished with the eyes. But I still couldn’t put the pen down and kept trying to draw more circles.
“We have to stop now,” she said, taking the paper and pens from me. I felt defeated and depressed. I was a total failure, incapable of drawing a decent circle. What would become of me?
These preschool stories illustrate the stringent perfectionism that has dominated my reason up until present time. It’s a nightmare. Being convinced that all of my articles, manuscripts and drawings—yes, I draw as well, despite the happy face trauma—and relationships must be perfect, I can psych myself out of taking action, completing projects or meeting new people.
I can’t recall how many art projects I’ve destroyed after I decided they were beyond fixing, and there have been times I’ve sat down to paint my nails and, not getting them perfect on the first try, found myself stuck at the table for nearly three hours painting and repainting until there wasn’t one speck of excess paint in the cuticles. It’s a very weird monomania fixedness.
Sadly, as I’ve expressed in my essays for this site that elucidate the many ways neuroticism and maladaptation eat into my quality of life, I don’t really have a solution to this neuroticism, outside of utilizing some CBT skills and staying on my meds (antidepressants can really help with OCD). I will say that now that I’ve turned 38, I am determined to work on cultivating the “Fuck what people think and perfection doesn’t exist” attitude. It’s a terrifying concept, but I suspect I’ll at least get more accomplished if I can surrender this strange strain of neuroticism that I’ve carted around for a whopping 35 years that demands I be perfect.
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