I Am Not Perfect

I am not perfect.

I am not remotely close to perfect.
But if you look at my behavior, and my lack of behavior, my inaction, you will know that I am motivated by a wanting to be perfect.
I know, I know.
Perfection is unattainable. I realize that.
That does not stop me from wanting it. Always. Even though I know I can never have it.
I wake up with the thought that, “Today I will do all the things I said I would do. I will exercise, meditate, clean the house, call my dad, take the car to the mechanic, finish the knitting, call my sister, call my son, go to the grocery store, transfer the money, do my writing, read at least a page or two in the seventeen books I’ve started… or is it the seventy hundred thousand million books I’ve started?
And after all that, I will go to bed early.
I will go to bed early.
Right.
In my dreams.
So, I wake up with that thought; those thoughts. They tumble out of the corners of my not-having-slept-enough brain before I have risen from the bed. Before I have opened my eyes. They crowd out the beautiful light pouring in through the window. They crowd out the sweet good-bye kiss I get from my amazing man. They crowd out the amusement I might get from watching my son pour excessive amounts of cayenne on all the Indian food he cooked up. They crowd out EVERYTHING in my present.
My present is gone.
And gone and gone and gone and gone…
every time I allow the thoughts unbridled ravaging of my just-waking mind.
The present vanishes and I become locked in how it’s too much, I can’t possibly, what was I thinking, how do other people… I’ll never be able to… and on and on, until I am only alive in my future and past…
I am no longer here.
I have, myself, vanished.
And the day speeds away without me.
Come nightfall, I panic mildly that there is so much to do before bed that I should’ve done by now, and I begin to spin.
I enumerate silently, and sometimes on paper so as to force myself to see what I’ve done, all the things I haven’t done. And sometimes, all the things I have done…
A bad dog, nose shoved down into the puddle of urine, the list of things I haven’t yet done, to discipline, punish, and get revenge… “Bad dog! Bad! Dog!”
Tail between my legs, I attempt dinner-making. Standing before the open fridge, I see nothing except what I haven’t done yet. I see things that will need to be chopped, heated, flipped, seasoned, and served, and I feel the pinch of time. I’m frozen with agitation.
If agitation can be frozen.
Instead of cooking, I slam the fridge door, and butter a piece of bread. Frozen.
Frozen and not even Here.
Frozen.
And not. Even. HERE.
To get back, I close my eyes for a moment and breathe in and breathe out. I bite the bread, taste the oily soft sweet butter melt on my tongue, feel the rough grainy bread crumble in my mouth, mix with my saliva.
I chew slowly, and swallow, feeling my throat tighten and loosen to squeeze the food down into my stomach so its precious nourishment can spread into and through me. I lower my eyes to see the bread in my hand; the hand with the small bandage on it’s thumb. I gently squeeze the bread and feel the spongy softness. A sesame seed pops away and sails to the floor. I stoop to pick it up. A single sesame seed, and put it in my mouth.
What flavor! The tiny little football-shaped speck.
And then, I’m back.