A personal essay on perfectionism, art, and not being able to let things go.

I have a fear of writing in pen. Ink bleeds its entire soul onto the paper, leaving an imprint that will never be erased. Imperfections can be rectified through two ways: white-out and scribbles. However, white-out never works properly, and scribbling over mistakes makes the paper look messy. Pencils are less stressful.

In the second grade, I took my first art class at a local studio. My sole memory of that session is the instructor handing me an eraser. “This will be your best friend from now on,” he said, rubbing the eraser on my outline of a dog (with slightly-off proportions). I, transfixed by the immediate disappearance of these lines, watched as the instructor then took my pencil and redrew the dog’s ear. “See—it’s fixed now. That’s the good thing about drawing in pencil.” I nodded. Pencils provided unlimited trial-and-error, redoes, second and third and fourth chances. My first attempts proved inconsequential; as long as the end result embodied perfection, nothing else mattered.

And so, I hated acrylic paint and markers and pens. When assigned a painting project, I would stare at my blank canvas for hours, watching smudges and thumb prints accumulate in the corners instead of painting. Simply, I was terrified of messing up. Each stroke of a paintbrush was an opportunity to ruin everything I had previously accomplished (which I guess, in a way, would be a paradox if I never even started the painting), and I would have to accept the subpar result or start all over again. My final work’s quality determined my self-esteem for the subsequent months, and I decided that anything less than perfection was failure.

 My sister and I have a running joke of calling our parents “hoarders”—they, particularly my dad, refuse to throw out any item in our house, no matter how many years have passed since anyone has even looked at it. I am much the same—I form attachments to the most trifling objects, though I just call myself sentimental. My bottom dresser drawer holds every piece of artwork I have created since the fourth grade, including the horse drawing that looks like a thumb (every time my dad insists that it looks realistic and we should frame it, I feel insulted because he never compliments my recent artwork). I still keep birthday cards signed by girls I pass in the school hallways and don’t acknowledge. Random objects that I will possibly have a use for one day ten years in the future pile up in the little green basket on my desk.  

My mind constantly juggles my dependence on permanence with my simultaneous yearning for perfection. Permanence is terrifying. Once you make mistakes, you can never go back on them to erase or request a second chance, making perfection that much less viable.

I’ve discovered that some people prefer a spontaneous lifestyle, living “in the moment” and acting without concern for consequences. On the other hand, all I do is think. What’s the best way to achieve perfection? What if I mess up? 

Periodically, I look at my past paintings and pen-and-ink drawings, which I can’t bring myself to get rid of, and it makes me want to throw something at the wall because I wish I could have painted Nighthawks, could have evoked such lachrymose in my viewers, could have captured every aspect of human loneliness in fourteen square feet—but I’m not Edward Hopper. I hate painting, actually. I stay in my safe zones, within the parameters of what I know I can do, ensure I can correct any mistakes, and I inch toward perfection. Erasers are my greatest asset, so I will stick to my pencils, not pens.

Process

I first drafted this piece for my AP Language and Composition class after attempting to deep clean my room and stumbling on the countless memories stored in my drawers. As a former artist, I have many completed pieces from over the years, but creating art became especially difficult for me when I became too focused on achieving perfection. Writing this essay has really helped me reflect on how my need for perfectionism has transcended into other aspects of my life, even simple ones like writing in pen, and how it simultaneously motivates and terrifies me.