To my fellow perfectionists,

We should just let it go.

This blog post began brewing on Thursday afternoon during a lunchtime getaway to Panera. I was having one of those Murphy’s law kind of weeks. Sometimes a series of small dings are equal to one punch in your gut and last week epitomized that. Feeling the pinches of stress caused by work, money, and the latest development, an impromptu and forced change to my decade old hair style, I started to feel hot tears stream down my face. Why? Because I have a bit of the perfectionist syndrome.

My mind swam through all the different lanes of my life and the clear waters I have created. The stable job. The proud parents. The apartment. The things that you’re supposed to have and do and take care of at the ripe age of 22. But, with those things come incredible responsibility and, in my case, self-inflicted pressure. I have spent the greater part of my early twenties greadually learning how to show vulnerability and take on new roles other than the feisty, put-together kid ready to take over the world. Because, although I’ve been cast in that part, some days, it’s only acting. Some days, I am anything but. Some days, people see those clear waters but only myself and my tribe know the mud and grit underneath the crystal waves.

So, this isn’t a pity party in the form of a blog post for anyone who ever considered themselves a perfectionist. Because, psychology 101 would teach you that perfectionism is merely insecurity. This is, instead, the anti-perfectionist mantra. This is for saying it’s ok to cry or sigh or yell. It’s ok to crack or shatter or fall apart at the seams. It is ok to not be ok. It is ok to not spit the programmed “I’m fine” when you are in fact not fine. It is ok to not have an answer to every question, a rebuttal to every debate, or a solution to every problem. It is ok to display a large middle finger to the world and to the buttoned up life you have created and do what you want to do. Wear what you want to wear. Be who you want to be. It is ok to fall, long and hard and fast, but only if you pick yourself back up. It is ok to let it out. In fact, it’s mandatory. Otherwise you become a robot with an internal volcano of emotions. Being human doesn’t make you any less of a person or a powerhouse. It simply makes you human.

Everything I just said in that last paragraph I was only telling myself.

Perfectionists, we just have to let it go.

Love freely,

tY

My best friend tweeted the wisdom. I just decided to make it a blog post.

“The post-college cutting of friends is real,” she told the Twitterverse somewhere around the time I downed the first sip of my morning coffee today.

My timeline erupted with people, myself included, retweeting what she said. Apparently we’ve all had to grab the scissors and snip some people out of lives after we shed our caps, gowns, and college residence.

From my own experience, I have cut less and sat back as a spectator more, watching some friendships gradually dissolve. People have become quicksand, slipping through the spaces between my fingers and falling on what was once our common ground. It’s sad and it sucks yet it’s inevitable. Once you leave the cozy nest of undergrad, the ties that bind you with friends are not quite so interlaced. In fact, you find yourself searching for the similarities. You can’t gripe about exams or walk to happy hour. You don’t know the same people or live in the same places. Your lives don’t mirror each other, making it that much more difficult to recognize the connection.

The benefit, however, of losing friendships is that you soon realize who your true friends are. You learn who are the ones who will pick up the phone at 2 am after a bad night, listen to you vent for 45 minutes and 34 seconds about how homesick you are, and remind you to be patient when you haven’t landed your dream job. You learn who is going to take care of you. You learn that very few friends will be all things to you at all times; some will make you laugh, some will let you cry, some will tell you what you want to hear, some will tell you what you need to hear. And, you’ll find those one or two who will do all of the above and more. You hold on to those people. You make them a part of you like your DNA and your daily breakfast bar. You return the same concrete friendship to them that they have gifted to you. You collect others along the way. Some of those friendships are seasonal, most are not life-changing, and every now and again you find a gem and add them to your tribe.

Learning how to be a friend, keep a friend, and let go of friends is one the building blocks of adulthood. The patterns of our lives after college migrate from identical to individually sewn. We move at different times. We love in different ways. We feel the pang of growing pains in completely different parts of our spirits. And, it only continues. Chances are my best friends and I will not get married on the same day or start families in the same year or land our dream jobs in the same week. We will experience the milestones of adulthood in our own ways and at our own pace. But, we will be there for each other no matter what. We will support one another and listen to the struggles of the other, even if we ourselves have yet to experience them.

That is what adult friendships are. Anything that doesn’t mirror that doesn’t merit our time, our energy, and our love.

Love freely,

tY

June 1, 2012 8:51 a.m. EST: I scan the room at a bloggers’ conference, searching for a half full table with inviting faces, the kind that I can break bread with during what is sure to be a long but exciting day. I sit down and meet California Amie. Within an hour, we’re conference buddies, exchanging business cards and tales of what we do when we’re not being up-and-coming bloggers at conferences. I tell Amie the condensed version of the past year of my life, a pitch I’ve recited to strangers so many times now that it’s a part of me just as much as my ten fingers and two arms. Two-year rotational program. I lived in Massachusetts before moving to Texas. I’ll be in Texas until October. No, I don’t know yet where I’m going after. I know where to punctuate the conversation with, “Yes, it’s so exciting!” and when to interject the, “Yes, it’s personal growth just as much as professional growth.” Except, this time during my life elevator speech, Amie says something that I haven’t heard before. “Well, you just have to bloom where you are planted.” I decide I like that maxim. Love it, in fact.

June 3, 2012 12:37 p.m. EST: The streets of New York City. My family and I have decided to capitalize on my rare East Coast appearance and visit some family in Queens. But, before we head their way, we stop in the city for a little shopping. Standing on the curb inundated by the outlandish scents of this place, I am reminded of myself as a 17-year old college freshman. Baking in my non-air conditioned dorm room, I dreamed of making it big in NYC. I mean…didn’t everyone? But a spring break visit there followed by far too many weekends there during my long-distance relationship gradually alerted me to the fact that maybe I am not born and bred for lots of people crammed in to tiny places. Or, maybe I am.

Present day: Sitting in the comfort of my one-bedroom apartment in Plano, Texas, a town designed for families and retired couples, not single 22-year old women. I remember Amie’s words.

My mini world tour over the past year is exhilirating to some and unimpressive others. After all, some people have lived on several continents by this age. If anything, I’ve learned that where we live determines our happiness far more than we believe or understand until we are uprooted. Because where we live determines who we have the pleasure or curse of being exposed to. And, well, who we have the pleasure or curse of being exposed to determines the relationships with which we are gifted. And, those relationships are the fibers of our being.

The one word I would use to describe myself in Texas is relaxed. Anytime people ask me how it’s going or how I like it, the answer is the same: “Texas is a very easy place to live.”  I certainly miss the East Coast and, even more specifically, the DMV. (No, not the Department of Motor Vehicles…DC/MD/VA, my loves.) To pillage the cliche, home is where the heart is. My heart is nestled somewhere in between Baltimore and the District of Columbia.

Nonetheless, Amie was right. It is possible to find happiness, sucesss and even more importantly, yourself, in the most obscure of places. It is possible to be pulled from the garden of your roots, planted in fresh soil, and bloom among the perennials.

Love freely,

tY