Perfection.

I have a student who is teaching me a lesson about perfectionism.

She struggles with writing, both at the conceptual and sentence levels; however, she's a bright young woman with some interesting ideas, which are good ingredients for a strong writer.

"What if I compared Hurricane Katrina and September 11th?" she asked when it was time to write a compare and contrast essay. I thought it was a good idea, but I encouraged her to focus on a few points to keep it from being too sprawling for the small-scale essay I'd required. She went off and wrote an essay that was pretty interesting, but needed some more analysis and a bit of polishing. I wrote some comments and asked her a few questions to help her get the analytical wheels turning, and gave it back. When she revised the essay, she had deleted everything she'd written previously and written an entirely new essay, this time proving that Hurricane Katrina and September 11th were similar because they were national tragedies but different because one was natural and the other was man-made. She'd taken away all the nuances in her argument about race and class and produced a poorly written essay on a silly topic. She repeated this process throughout the semester with every essay, so finally we had a meeting to talk it over.

She said she'd felt like she'd made too much of a mess of her first drafts, so she rewrote them on easier topics for the second and third. Instead of processing through her mistakes and polishing up the raw material into something powerful, she'd tear it all down and rebuild on a smaller scale. If she couldn't write a perfect essay in one attempt, she felt like she never could. It was too hard. She gave up.

I offered her an analogy. "If you're styling your hair, and there is a piece that is sticking up, do you shave your head?"

"No."

"You smooth that piece down, right?"

"Yes."

"That's what's happening with this essay. You've got a few little things that need to be smoothed over and finessed. You've shaved your essay's head."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I understand."

I understand too well. There are many times in my life when I'm afraid to attempt something because I believe I will fail. I see my husband, too, struggling with his attempts to get clean. It seems too hard, too big, and too much. If he slips, he figures he should just give up. Fuck it all.

There's something I'm learning here...I'm not sure what it is exactly, but my student has been helping me sort through some of my own struggles, and I'm grateful to her for the lesson.

Dirty Laundry.

My husband showed up at the house yesterday with a basket full of dirty laundry, both actual and metaphorical. He had a big speech prepared about how he has to live here because he doesn't have anywhere else to go. He said if I wanted him gone, I'd have to call the cops and make them come fulfill his arrest warrant.

After his big, stompy speech, he put his arms around me and tried to comfort me.

I felt kind of like I was going to explode from the pressure. A big part of me, of course, wants him to be here. I've always wanted him to be here. I'd been missing him, and the thought of him being back home was a great relief. Another part of me, though, knows that I'm not ready for him to be back. I know he hasn't worked through whatever he needs to work through or figured out whatever lesson he needs to learn for us to be able to be together and be healthy.

I didn't know what to say. I'm not ready to call the cops on him. I'm not afraid to do it, but I'm saving that door for when I really need it. I knew that calling the cops wasn't an option.

I decided to swath myself in sanity. I called some program friends, and I called my sponsor. I went to a yoga class, and I went to a meditation session. I stayed afterward and sought support from the meditation teacher.

I came home with a set of boundaries that I think I can live with, and with an option to help him be able to get to work if he can't live with the boundaries I need. We are going to revisit the situation in two weeks and see how things are going. We both agreed to commit to working on our marriage in the meantime.

So far, it's ok. He's working today, and he has found another side job to make some money. The deal breaker for me now is going to be what he does with the money he makes from the side job. If he's willing to give some up to help with the bills, then I will accept that he's doing the best he can to contribute, and I'll continue to live with him. If he won't...if something mysterious happens (like it always does) with this money, then he's going to have to find somewhere else to go. Since most of his reasoning for why he has to be here is that he can't get to work from his parents' house, I told him that if I realize I can't live with him, I'll still help him get a ride back and forth to work for a couple of weeks after he leaves.

Today, it seems workable. I am so glad to have him home, but I was also getting so comfortable finding my own way. I can't think clearly in the presence of this man all the time, but it's getting easier. Every time he leaves for a little while, I get a little stronger, and a little clearer. I'm doing the best I can right now, and it's enough for me. We'll see what happens next.