This is the right follow-up to perfection for me. I strive for perfection for a single reason: to be loved.

My entire life, love has been tied up in a lot of things. The better I did, the more love I got. The better I was, the more love I got.

If I didn’t do well, I got silence. If I wasn’t good, I got silence.

To this day, I get silence when I don’t perform in the way that is expected of me. It has permeated every fiber of my body. I have linked silence to being bad, to doing things wrong. Silence is the way I have been abandoned in life.

I’m ok with good silence. That is, if I know that things are going well and I’m in a happy place, I deal with silence well. It’s when I’m unsure of myself, unsure of my role, unsure of my place within a dynamic that silence absolutely tears me apart.

I panic. I can feel the panic rise in me and take me over. My skin tingles, my mind rages, and I feel like I’m either on the verge of tears or some crazed rant.

I go a little insane and do things I wouldn’t normally do when I’m at peace.

Even writing about it, I can feel it right below the surface. It scares me. It is the scariest thing that I face in my life, this panic. It is all-consuming.

With some help, I’m working on finding calm when I feel the panic rising. I’m working on finding peace. I’m working on understanding that silence is not necessarily about me, about my actions, but could be about life or about time or about any number of things but not always about me.

I’m a work in progress. I’m learning new lessons each day. I’m learning to focus on perspective, flexibility, patience, and compassion.

—

Self-Abandonment
Li Po

I sat drinking and did not notice the dusk,
Till falling petals filled the folds of my dress.
Drunken I rose and walked to the moonlit stream;
The birds were gone, and men also few.