An Imperfect World: By Ashley Harris

Perfection I hear a lot but perfection I do not see. In my mirror of truth which shows one who they really are perfection is not there. When I walk to my mirror it is me who I see. My flaws, my imperfections, an imperfect world behind me and still tear myself down about my mistakes. But in my mirror imperfection and flaws look alright to me. So I wake up and look in that mirror and see a flawed girl who accepts her imperfections in an imperfect world.

Growing up in a family that believed in perfectionism played a big part in my life. I always found myself trying so hard to be as perfect as those in my family seemed to be. I wanted everything to be perfect whether it was how I looked, how I spoke, how I dressed or even how I acted. There was never a time I wasn’t doing whatever I could do to show that I was without a flaw. There was one person who I looked up to because he was perfect by the image he put on.

“Pencils have erasers for children but we’re suppose to use pens.” This is something my Uncle Micheal use to tell me. He was one of the biggest perfectionists in my family and I looked up to him. He always spoke his best, looked his best, and he seemed to never have a flaw. He had me convinced that being perfect was the greatest thing in life that I expected so much from him that he was very well on a high pedestal. I expected so much that when times became hard and he wasn’t able to handle them he fell right off that very pedestal he was once on. As time passed, things got harder for my uncle, so hard that he resorted to drugs. I never thought that he would ever be the one to give up but he was and I had to accept that. I sat around and thought to myself that it was that same man who in my eyes had everything I wanted and had no flaws at all. That same man who tried so hard to keep his image up as “the perfect one” that when life’s realities hit him he wasn’t strong enough to go on without worrying about his image. My own Uncle Micheal, the one I wanted to be like had let me down and I still accepted him flaws and all but in the mist of it all his downfall taught me a valuable lesson.

No one is or can be perfect but that doesn’t stop me from being the best in what I do. We try so hard to be that ideal prototype that we forget the important thing in life and that is to be happy and accept ourselves for what we are, Human beings with flaws. One of the greatest tragedies in our society is that we have not fully embraced the idea of imperfection. I believe in Imperfections…… They are who I am.