Perfection is a craving. It is an addiction; the more you feed it, the worse it gets.

Perfection is irreversible damage. Once you set the standard too high, you can never go back. You must always meet it. Never falter. Perfection does not wait for failure.

Perfection is erasing your name at the top of the page and rewriting it, because you know you can write it neater. Perfection is staying out until dark and taking that shot over and over until you hit every one. Perfect is the numbers in front of you starting to blur because this is your seventh hour of studying. Perfection is aching muscles because you have been at it all day. Perfect is losing track of time and not knowing how long ago you started. Perfection is that itching feeling that runs through your body when you try to fight it, and it will not go away until you give in. Rep after rep. Equation after equation. It never ends. There is always a new standard to meet. A new way you can do better.

I am a person who struggles with perfectionism. I exhaust myself to prove to myself that I can.

I remember the first time I was desperately struggling in math. Not just light confusion, but completely lost. Despite having two tutors, I was just not getting it. And of course, there was a test coming up. I probably studied for 14 hours over the weekend. I felt like I was going mad. I drilled my brain on algebra nonstop, frantic to understand. Still, despite my best efforts to grasp the material, on the day of the test, I walked out of the classroom thinking I failed. I felt miserable all day and wanted to go home. Waiting for my test score was absolute torture. My overall grade was teetering between a B+ and an A-. This test would determine the outcome. Even worse, this was the last assignment going in before the grading period ended. It felt like my whole life depended on that test, and I had blown it. I tried to let it go, to push it out of my mind, but no matter what I did, I was plagued by stress.

However, I was shocked to discover that I got an A on the test. At the moment, I was absolutely ecstatic. All my hard work paid off! I thought. But as I reflect on it now, I honestly wish I had failed the test. Because now I am still trapped.

Maybe if I failed, it would have broken the chain I am stuck in. Maybe I would have finally given myself a break and said, “I studied for hours. I did all that I could. Move forward.” Because now, the grade I earned proved to my perfectionist brain that I can get an A no matter how challenging the subject. I just have to study for 14 hours…

Everyone has a different standard that they hold themselves to. Some are much higher than others. But what separates the perfectionists and the regulars of the world is that perfectionists are stuck.

Here is why perfectionists can never win: they have put it on themselves that they must be perfect, but true perfection does not exist. There is a rift in the system — a buckle. How can you strive for something that does not exist? How can you shoot for something unattainable? Welcome to the strangling world of perfection.

Perfectionists feel a suffocating need to succeed in everything, to be good at everything. School. Sports. Life. The more time that passes, the worse it gets. They pile responsibility after responsibility on their shoulders. The stack grows higher and higher until it is wobbling and swaying, on the brink of collapsing. How will they know when to stop? How much is too much? I am scared to find out. But until then, we will stack and stack and stack. Until the pressure drags us under. Until we have no strength left to add to the pile of standards. Until our knees give in under the weight and we collapse to the floor, the heavy load crushing us as we fall.

So allow yourself to mess up. Make all the errors. Get B’s. Get C’s. Get F’s. Try your best, but do not hold yourself to an unrealistic standard.

Screw up. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Fail tests, knowing you did what you could. Allow yourself to falter, because something has to break the cycle.

I often wonder where this insurmountable pressure is coming from. Not my teachers. Not my friends. Definitely not my parents. There is a phrase I have been hearing my mom say for as long as I can remember, and she continues to say it to this day. “Just try your best.” Such a simple sentence, with such a loaded meaning. For a long time, I did not realize how important those four little words were.

Just try your best. And if your best is not an A, that is okay. If your best is not perfect, that is okay. Just try your best, because that is all you can do.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, I wish I could trade all those hours I spent doing homework or studying for doing some I love, like sewing, reading or spending time with my family and friends.

I was not always a student with good grades. It did not occur to me until 7th grade that I could get A’s if I was unafraid to work a little harder. And I never went back.

I used to not care. I failed tests, I did not turn in work, and I did not care. When I was a freshman, I thought back on those times with disgust. “What was wrong with me? I can’t believe I was so negligent!” But now, as a junior, I look back on those times with admiration. I don’t remember the grades I got on those tests. But I remember laughing with my friends and making memories. I remember doing art projects, reading my favorite book series and playing soccer.

So, I ask myself again, what am I doing this all for?

Do I want to look back on high school and remember all those homework-filled nights where I could barely keep my eyes open, where I fell asleep over a math book, where I was so tired I felt sick to my stomach? Or do I want to make good memories?

I do not want to finish high school and think, “Thank god. I made it.” I want to finish high school and think, “It’s over already?”

So thank you to the American school system for drilling math formulas into my brain when I will not be a mathematician. For making me memorize science definitions when I won’t be a scientist. I would love to only pursue things I am passionate about, but I can not. I do not have time to do what I love. Because I am too busy studying for that Algebra test.