Seeing Clearly
When I trace in my body where my need for perfection lies, I realize it’s in my eyes. It’s always been in my eyes. I need to see clearly. Perfectly, even.
As a little girl, when my vision first started getting a bit fuzzy and I needed glasses to see the blackboard clearly (age 6? 7?) I remember the optometrist saying to my mother “Now, don’t let her wear those glasses all the time or she’ll need them all the time. She should just wear them to look at the board. Her vision is better than perfect with them on.” He might as well have told me not to open a banned book. Or not to put beans up my nose.
I loved seeing perfectly. Still do.
Post-cataract surgery has been kind of a nightmare, leaving me with perfect distance vision and the inability to see clearly up close. Readers correct the close stuff. From 5-10 feet is consistently blurry. “That’s no man’s land,” said the Ophthalmologist recently. “Don’t expect to see well there.”
Not ok. Not what you said initially. I’m frustrated. It might be the truth, but I sure didn't want to hear it. Or see it.
During therapy, I realized my underlying perfectionism manifested in having everything look perfect for everyone else. My house, for company. My table at a holiday dinner. My writing. My music. And, most of all, my first marriage.
People have asked me why I stayed with him for so long. How was it possible for me not to see what was going on? How could I rationalize his destructive behavior? These are reasonable questions that left me with deep seated shame.
There are a lot of parallels that can be drawn with the state of our country today. How is it possible not to see what is going on? How can we rationalize the destruction of everything we hold dear as a democracy?
Here’s your answer:
You can work really hard at making things look perfect to the outside world. Enablers of narcissists fawn, pretending nothing is wrong, shielding the narcissist from hearing the truth to prevent yet another explosion. Inside, they’re crumbling under the strain of the illusion.
We are seeing these people struggle publicly every day now, on podiums, on talk shows, in the papers.
Knowing and accepting the truth about someone means throwing away your own preconceived notions of perfection. With a narcissist, it means understanding and admitting that things aren’t how they seem on the outside. It means not believing the stories that you’ve told yourself to carry on.
So next time you wonder why someone stays with a toxic spouse, or parent, or boss, and continues to try so hard to live a “perfect” life, this is why. Likewise, sycophants of charismatic leaders tend to stick around, even as the lies pile up.
Seeing clearly is simply too painful.
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