#the sooner you unlearn your perfectionism

[lyraeon]

I didn't put it in the original post because I was focused on things I did as an adult, after I already had agency and freedom to some extent.

But I know some of you are still 15, so even though it's been 20 years and 2002 was a very different time:

at 15 I was a sophomore high schooler at a very extracurricular-focused, homework heavy public high school, following spending K-3 homeschooled and 4-8 at a magnet school for Gifted Kids™. I couldn't get myself to do my homework or any projects, unless I could do them in class while the teacher was talking, and I never understood why. I'd gotten away with it before high school but 100%s on tests couldn't offset grades there, so I was spiraling into a worse and worse depression because I had no metric to measure myself on besides my grades and CLEARLY my family was right and I was just lazy and defiant and didn't want to do the homework and I was just making up the whole "I keep forgetting" and "I sit there and stare at it for hours but can't make myself do it" things. I was eternally grounded for my grades and "laziness", and my folks blamed my internet friends and the fact I stopped going to church for my bad attitude and depression (which I Totally Didn't Have Because You Have A Perfect Life With A Great Family And How Could You Be So Ungrateful And Make Us Look Bad By Pretending To Be Sad All The Time?)

Despite all this I still bought in to all my folks' racism and Bush loving bullshit (the defense was, "it wasn't that we hated ALL minorities! just the lazy ones! and it's their fault racism exists because they're making the whole group look bad!" and if that kind of argument feels at all defenseable to you please snap out of it) and earnestly believed being gay was just something perverts did and so all gay people should be in jail (and in my brainwashed mind, were, because all criminals were instantly caught and punished as far as I'd been taught - which we were largely taught to keep us scared of making even tiny mistakes). I defended having black and Muslim friends to my family as them being Some Of The Good Ones™ and only finally started to realize shit was fucked up when my grandfather banned me from visiting his house for dating a black guy (and did so in terms that even my folks knew were godawful slurs, but He's Old, Times Were Different, so I was just Supposed To Accept It.)

When you're young, you don't know what you don't know. You know what you have access to, are taught, and are shown. It would be nice if we all just instinctively knew what things are good and bad, or if we learned the truth on first exposure, but when you've heard the same rhetoric day in and day out your whole life you have no reason to question it until you're given one.

My friends had already tried telling me how racist I was and my response was that they didn't understand, I didn't hate all minorities, I just hated lazy and entitled people, and most minorities just happened to be lazy and entitled! and it was those people's fault for making the whole group look bad! not to mention systemic problems didn't exist and equality was definitely real and She Shouldn't Have Dressed Like That and all the other crap. It was all very, very well ingrained in there, and a huge part of it was that I had been made to feel like I was an awful person who barely deserved to exist because of how lazy and entitled I supposedly was (at 15! though a lot of this was ingrained much younger), so I really believed that one of the Truths of the universe was that laziness was a horrible sin and anyone who defended it was evil. Even after I finally got it through my skull that racism still existed and was still VERY prevalent, it was several more years before I snapped out of "well if the lazy people would just stop making them look bad".

(If it sounds like a lot of that's also ingrained self-hatred from the repeatedly diagnosed but ignored by my folks undiagnosed ADHD, you're absolutely right, and that's part of why I say a lot of hateful people are just resentful that others aren't holding themselves to the same impossible standards they hold themselves to [nevermind if they actually meet them or not] and that getting them to un-internalize those things will help snap them out of hating others.)

Same with "the gays". I went through so many stages - and the first stage was actually making up an all-girl alien race in 5th grade that didn't need icky boys and that reproduced by fusing eggs together, then getting chewed out by the girl scout troop leader for joking about homosexuality in front of her daughter, which is how I found out that being gay is even an actual thing not something I'd have to be an alien to be AND that being gay was supposedly a sin and illegal on the same day. It took no time at all for me to be all in on praying for those poor poor people who had been lead astray and given in to their perverted temptations, in hopes God would help them find their way and repent. I also decided I definitely had a crush on my best guy friend cuz clearly boys and girls can't just be friends either so it HAD to be a crush, right? (that one actually might have been, but then he moved away and man, the guy I obsessively pretended to like in 6th grade after that and I had a hilarious talk at 31 because he's now gay and an underwear model and he apparently never said anything negative about my awkward "crush" because he already knew he was gay and it made for a nice cover).

That carried on for years. At 16, my best friend came out to me in a crying fit, promising to me that she wasn't actually gay, she just really loved our one friend that much and surely that had to be ok as long as they never had sex because God doesn't make mistakes and wouldn't have made her be in love with a girl if that was actually Bad, right? My boyfriend at the time (who wouldn't officially come out as bi until his spouse came out as trans 10+ years later) told me he'd probably kiss a guy if he were cute enough, but he'd definitely never do it because we were gonna get married and have 3 kids and 2 dogs by the time we were 25, even though kissing a guy wouldn't really be cheating because well it's not like it'd be romantic cuz that'd be gay lmao. I made only three friends at college - one was a fairly open Two-Spirit person (my first real encounter with anyone trans-identifying, and at the time my brain did mental gymnastics to say that it was ok because she was Native American and their culture was different), one I was on tenuous terms with because she was a stoner, but also the only other gamer in the building, so I dealt with it, and she came out as bi within a couple months. The third was ace - a concept we didn't have a word for yet but somehow still understood and accepted as something Weird But Yeah It Makes Sense. By the end of the year I had started to suspect I liked girls but was fully convinced I was just playing up noticing how pretty they were in order to "fit in" better with my gay friends.

Part of why I stopped talking to my family for a while is because they banned me from being left alone with any minors in the family after I came out as bi at 19. I liked women, so in my family's mind that included even little kids and I was now a danger. I was so livid that I cut them off as much as I could.

Ironically I might have snapped out of a lot of the rest sooner if I hadn't cut them off, because being exposed to the juxtaposition of their bigoted views and emotional abuse vs the way the world actually was is what snapped me out of the first few things and made me start questioning the rest.

My point on all this is, again: people change and grow, and people don't know what they don't know. That doesn't mean you have to indulge every time someone asks for information (especially since sea lions exist) or go out of your way to explain things to people, but it does mean that things aren't as simple as "if you have ever said a homophobic thing you are awful forever", especially when those things are said while you're still under direct influence of your family and haven't had a chance to experience the world without their filter on it yet.

Basically, someone who's 80 and still uses the N-word has had plenty of time to be exposed to the world at large and know that's bigoted and has actively decided they don't care (or even are happy about it) and want to be seen that way. But someone who's still in high school and doing it may just not have exposure to anything they trusted and said different yet. That doesn't make them your responsibility nor mean you have to tolerate it, but it does mean dismissing them as lost causes or deliberately hateful may be missing the chance to snap them out of it and make the world a little less hateful, and if you are someone with the time, resources, and knowledge to educate them, it may be worth speaking up.

And I know I'm forever grateful to the people who took that time with me, and who saw that I wanted to be a good person but had been raised to think the bad things I was doing were good, and decided I was worth prying out of that. But I'm also forever indebted to them for putting up with my bullshit before then and for spending that effort, and I still wish I could undo the damage I did while I thought that way.

What it means above all is to constantly be curious about new things and look into them deeper. It's easy to fear or hate things you don't understand and to blindly believe the people you trust because they've raised and/or supported you. It's hard to ask extra questions, dig deeper, and to face the fact you were wrong about something - but it's worth it.

And if the people you spend time with make you afraid to admit you were wrong or to suggest they might be - not "I might have to explain things or get disagreed with" afraid but "I will get yelled at, ostracized, or worse for questioning anything or for admitting I made a mistake" afraid? You might need some different people to hang out with.

at 20 I thought I was faking my depression and was "bad at life" and lazy like my family said. I still earnestly believed I was entirely straight and everyone knew girls are just nicer to look at. I still had a ton of ingrained racism and other bigotry from my Bush-worshipping family. My main dream of being an astronaut had been smashed by my anxiety and health problems, so I was trying to study Japanese because like every other weeb I thought I'd fit in better over there (lol), but I'd already flunked out of one college and been forced to quit another to get a second job. I was overdrawn constantly and often buying gas station gift cards at the grocery store so I'd only take one overdraft fee. I was dating someone horribly controlling who eventually earned the title "evil ex", dialed up my eating disorder, and traumatized me out of writing for 2+ years. I had several roommates because we all considered having the funds to go to anime conventions more important than personal space (and because back then we already thought $600/month was expensive). I spent any other free time half asleep at a friend's house cuz there I could play games and watch Intent videos. Half my meals came free from work, the rest were hacked together from stuff that worked out to $1/serving or so. The power or internet got turned off at least twice a year from non-payment.

at 25 I thought I was too depressed to deserve burdening others with my presence or existence. that I was a burden and purposeful downer and nothing would ever get better. I was still dealing with a ton of internalized transphobia, racism, and other bigotry that I had been taught was Just The Truth and still occasionally fall into. I was massively straight edge against weed and anything else (threatened to call cops on close friends) while also being a half bottle of vodka a day alcoholic just to get my brain to shut up enough to let me write or sleep. I didn't know how to have fun without alcohol, if at all. I had lost my ability to draw when I severely injured my wrist while i had no insurance. I tried going back to school, first for architecture then teaching, and flunked/dropped out of both. I was losing jobs every 6~8 months from being chronically late and being sick constantly. I manged to lose one on my birthday and wound up having to make some other tough choices because of it. I had only just reached the point where being overdrawn was a rare thing and I wasn't buying single gallons of gas with tip money. food was still often just ramen but I no longer had days where I didn't know if I'd get to eat, though I was often dependent on my then-bf. I had multiple teeth rotting and couldn't afford any treatment besides getting them pulled, and often not until they'd become infected.

by 30 I was finally on antidepressants and in therapy. I was on the road to physical therapy for shoulder and wrist injuries that had happened years earlier. I was pretty happy in my relationship. I held down one job for almost 3 years straight after getting medicated, then turned around and flunked/dropped out of college for the 5th time (Physics this time) because I was too anxious to take public transit reliably and STILL couldn't do homework anywhere but in class, so most projects never got done. I'd stopped being able to write (and am still running from the possibility my meds Took That from me because it doesn't come back if I stop them). Food had become a different struggle - I no longer had time, physical health, or executive function to cook reliably so I was spending too much on take out and causing wild fluctuations in my weight. I was hiding my eating disorder from my partner and my friends. I had begrudgingly un-estranged myself from my family to support younger cousins as they came out as queer. I had developed a healthier relationship with alcohol. I had accepted that, outside of addiction, drugs are a bodily autonomy thing and stopped being an ass to people about them. I had finally learned some damn etiquette around things like not accidentally outing people. I started streaming and making videos - stuff I had dreamed of since first watching Dead Fantasy and Red vs Blue and Weeblstuff in high school but had thought impossible after I lost the ability to draw.

I'm currently 35. This year I am living on my own for the first time (aside from 5 failed months at 18). I got divorced - a complicated, regretful process that was ultimately for the best but I could and should have handled better (and sooner). I've been in physical therapy long enough that I'm able to use chopsticks properly again and am thinking of trying to relearn drawing. It's also meant I can do the dishes and wash my hair on my own again, most days, so I'm relearning how to cook consistently. I'm reading (listening to) books again. I'm on year 8 of antidepressants and currently working with my doctor to fine tune what I'm on (and finally have a system to take them consistently). I've been diagnosed with ADHD and figured out I might also be autistic, and a lot of things in my life make way more sense when viewed through that context. I have appointments to get evaluated for ADHD meds, autism, shoulder surgery/other "PT isn't enough" treatments, teeth implants, and new glasses. my clothes have been put away 3 of the last 5 times I did laundry and I've learned that if I only own one dishwasher worth of dishes, the sink can't pile up. I've fully embraced that I'm polyamorous, pansexual, and demiromantic, and that I can be cis while also being "gender agnostic" - none of it really matters or processes to me, but I get that it does to others so I respect it. I'm seeing someone who makes me feel like I can do anything, is inspiringly ambitious themself, and is equally polyam, meaning I might also be asking out a cute girl soon and don't know where board game nights with the nice throuple I met might go. I'm having to do odd jobs and accept help from my dad to make ends meet, but I'm arguably a full time content creator now - something I literally didn't even let myself dream about when I was younger because it felt impossible, but which is fully worth the complications and budget crunching because it's so accommodating to my disabilities and uses so many of my talents. I'm still depressed, but I have hope that ADHD treatment will help cut through the remainder. Most days I just have hope, period. And more days than not, I'm genuinely happy for at least a while.

You'll find yourself.

It might take a while. There will be detours, mistakes, pain, tough choices, and a lot of hard work. But there will also be unexpected joys and more possibilities than you ever imagined.

Someday, you'll find yourself.

And when you do, it will be worth the wait, I promise.