Flylady, Perfectionism and Love

Last week, I finished reading The Last Time I Saw You. While it had too many “adult” references in it for my taste (so I can’t really say I’d recommend it), it did prompt me to think (as if I ever need any more prompting to think…). Since I am preparing to attend a high school reunion, I found it interesting reading about characters, shallow and stereotypical though many of them were, who were also attending a high school reunion.

The reunion I’m looking forward to is for the high school I attended my freshman year before we moved. So, most of my memories with the friends I will be seeing were established in late elementary school and middle school. Yes, I remember. I was once a middle school girl. And since I, thankfully, have a very good memory, I remember a lot about being a middle school girl. Eesh. Talk about fertile ground for growing into a perfectionist. I know I had a tendency toward perfectionism before middle school, but my perfectionism was certainly encouraged, nourished, supported during those middle school years.

Isn’t strange how we perfectionists equate being perfect with being loved? I can just clearly re-live those middle school moments of striving to achieve perfectionism so I would be “loved”–by the classmates I’m looking forward to seeing soon. That’s just so strange. But anyone who is a perfectionist, if he or she is honest, knows that is true.

I am really grateful for this year of thinking and writing about Flylady every day. I keep thinking I’ve peeled away every possible layer of perfectionism, gained enough understanding to say that I’m pretty much healed from it. But, then, up pops a class reunion and here I am, peeling, again.

Advertisement