Perfect

The night before Thanksgiving, I’m out delivering pizzas. I’ve been at this job two months now, and I’ve yet to make a mistake, or forget something. It’s a point of pride for me. Even the Big Boss says I’m a cut above the teenagers who usually work there.

But on this night, I arrive at the customer’s door, in an extraordinarily affluent part of Tucson’s foothills, multi-million dollar homes and desert estates, and I glance at the ticket. My heart sinks. I’ve forgotten their Greek salad. Just missed it. I ring the doorbell, and a man answers. I explain the situation and hand him the rest of his food. To my surprise, he doesn’t seem all that upset, and tells me there’s no need to run back to the store to get the salad. Just strike it off the order, he says, offering me a generous tip and wishing me a happy Thanksgiving. I wish him the same and hop back in my car.

For the next ten minutes, as I drive in silence, I feel in my body that I’ve fucked up beyond measure, that I’ve blown it, that I am unworthy of even this job. Other people are allowed to make mistakes, to forget things, to be human, but not me. I am consumed by a feeling of shame, a fiery hot cauldron in my chest. But even as this is happening, there’s a small spark of awareness in me, a whisper in my ear pointing out how ridiculous my reaction is, how over the top. You think you’re worthless because you forgot a salad? The guy didn’t even mind! Get a grip, bro!

In the coming months, I will make more mistakes in my duties as a Pizza Delivery Expert. I will forget an Italian sub, accidentally close a ticket by clicking “cash” instead of the button to charge their credit card, and open the dishwasher before it’s finished and spraying the cook with warm water. Each time, I will be shown grace by the world around me. The customer is grateful when I run back to the store and grab their sandwich. The manager is peeved but understanding. The cook laughs and laughs at our unexpected mishap. In these moments I begin feeling that grace, allowing it, and offering a bit of it to myself. Maybe I am allowed to make mistakes. Perhaps I will not be punished in the way my psyche expects. Maybe I am allowed to be human, after all.

The summer earlier, I’m staying at my mom’s house. She’s bailed on the brutal Sonoran summer and taken her RV up to the northeast. I’ve been left with a mandate to keep her house clean and her plants watered. Each Monday, I water those plants in exactly the way she’s instructed, using the hose out in the garden and giving two ice cubes to her orchid. When the summer sun starts scorching the plants on the patio, I feel my heart sink. She’s going to come home and see that I’ve failed. When the orchid starts shedding petals, I feel the same. Soon her wrath will be upon me, and I’ve brought this upon myself. It never occurs to me at the time that this might be the source of the perfectionism that has so paralyzed me my whole adult life. No, my fear of my mother couldn’t possibly be related!

In one of our marathon phone calls, a regular occurrence between myself and The Girl, she brings up something I’d said a few weeks prior that had made her feel uncomfortable, how I’d complimented both her and her friend, saying they both looked lovely in a photo she’d shared. I’m unable to hear the hurt in her voice, her desire to be the only girl I have eyes for, the one I’ve chosen. I launch into a boneheaded defensive posture, saying that women are, in fact, lovely to look at, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. I double down, and can’t see, let alone accept, that I’ve said something that triggered her own insecurity, her own fear. I try to make her wrong, because if I own my mistake, if I apologize, that means something is wrong with me, that the perfect picture I’ve tried so hard to portray is merely an illusion.

Through all of these anecdotes, I notice something about my relationship with commitment. In my mind, each new relationship, and each new commitment I make in life—be it as a pizza boy, a promise to water plants, or a connection to a woman I love—each of these feels like a new dimension of life I have to be perfect at. It’s an accrual of weight, layered on top of all the other things I’ve long believed I must excel and be perfect at, as it is with food, money, business, spirituality, relationships, etc. Each new thing I say yes to adds to the weight I’m already struggling to hold on my shoulders. It grows the surface area for possible mistakes, which I’m not allowed to make. In other words, I’m starting to see that I’m afraid of making commitments because it all feels like a game of Existential Jenga. One new brick removed from the base and added to the top might be the one that brings the whole tower crumbling down.