little rant.

my caption

there’s a reason for my invisible tears. for the yell stuck in my throat like a lump. it’s perfectionism. it’s anxiety. it’s depression. and it’s anger for being any of those. you know what, i cry myself to sleep, rocking back and forth. but you wouldn’t understand. i scratch my arms til deep red wounds are inflicted upon my soft skin. but you would not understand. i feel breathless, the urge to break everything, but i just hug myself and my head, and curl up because the gravity feels too heavy. i fear that earth may suck me in alive. i always look up to people with expectant eyes that want even the slightest nod of approval, to feel a bit at ease but never truly satisfied. i immediately am filled with hollowness but for a haze of smoke that fills my lungs and chokes me. even after getting something i want, i feel unworthy despite trying and trying til burnout every single time. i feel the heavy urge to be perfect in everything. be ready before anyone. be the one with more perfect numbers: grades, weight, height, the number of universities ranked higher, number of events i attend to feel more productive, number of movies i watch, number of books i read, minutes of music listened. everything higher. even a little bit from the standard. and feel the pain to be accepted and loved by everyone. be million types of myself to be included by a certain group. a group who is an over achiever as well, but the difference is that they are perfect. and in return, forget who i am for trying to fit in that group. i retreat to take a rest. but i scroll and scroll. and in every swipe, there’s someone skinnier, prettier, softer, braver, nicer, smarter, richer, more confident, more friendly, more carefree. and i feel the heavy urge to be THEM. i starve myself and feel guilt in every bite to feel skinnier. clutch my hair when something doesn’t work out. even for the first time. because i have to be perfect, doesn’t i? but WOULD you understand?

perfectionism will be the end of me. it starts early for girls. be good. be smart, but not intimidating. be ambitious, but grateful. be beautiful, but effortless. be kind, but never angry. somewhere along the way, perfection stops being a goal and becomes a condition for deserving love. and i internalized it so deeply that even resting feels like a grand failure. i feel guilty all the time: for not doing enough, for doing too much, for wanting more, for wanting anything at all. guilt sits in my chest like a second heart, beating faster whenever i compare myself to someone who seems to be doing life better. and i despise that comparison, but i also despise how automatic it is. i scroll, i observe, i measure myself in fragments: her confidence, her discipline, her ease. i envy her, then immediately feel ashamed for the envy. what kind of girl envies another girl when we’re all barely surviving? but envy is the sin no one admits to, especially not girls. but it exists. it flickers like a match in the dark. i envy ease. i envy girls who seem to move through life without constantly auditing their worth. but shame is always there too. it comes out from its corner immediately after envy, heavy and moral, telling me I am small for wanting what they have. as if wanting relief is a flaw. anger lives right under the guilt. anger at expectations i never agreed to. anger at the fact that i could do everything “right” and still feel like i am falling behind. anger at myself for not being softer, quieter, stronger, smarter, prettier: pick one, pick all. but girls are taught to swallow anger, to translate it into productivity, politeness, or poems. so i turn it inward. i criticize myself before anyone else can. i punish myself for imperfections no one else noticed. because it feels better to be criticized by myself than someone else doing it for me. and this shame… shame is the most loyal companion of perfectionism. shame for mistakes that made me human. shame for emotions that were inconvenient. shame for not living up to a version of myself that only exists in my head. i rehearse my failures more than my successes. i remember the one wrong thing i said louder than the hundred things i did right. what hurts the most is that perfectionism disguises itself as discipline, ambition, self-respect. people praise it. they call you driven, mature, impressive. unaware of the exhaustion behind it. they don’t see the nights where you cry because no matter how hard you try, it never feels enough. they don’t see how being “high-functioning” is just socially acceptable suffering. and this is what so many girls carry silently (not only me. see, i’m complaining again. ranting, venting again). other girls also carry the fear that if they stop striving, they will disappear. that if they are not exceptional, they are replaceable. that rest and love must be earned, softness justified, worth proven over and over again. and i am tired of proving. i am tired of apologizing for not being perfect. i am tired of mistaking self-destruction for self-improvement.

i don’t know whether to be grateful for perfectionism that taught me how to bleed without leaving stains. i learned to smile while unraveling, to call it discipline when it was really fear. i treated myself like a fragile object that had to remain flawless to be worth keeping. no cracks. no mess. no proof that i was struggling. i became a house with every light on and no one inside. but my mind feels like a glass room. it’s transparent, exposed. everyone can see when I’m productive, composed, excelling. no one sees the fingerprints on the walls, the panic of being watched from every angle. perfectionism makes you live as if you are always being evaluated, even in solitude. especially in solitude. so you have to play along. so you have to act. i cannot stop talking about the guilt that follows me like a shadow that sharpens at night. guilt chokes me. it always whispers that rest is indulgence, that joy must be justified, that ease is suspicious. when i fail, inevitably, i don’t fall gently. i break and i shatter. i punish myself for gravity, for being human in a body that gets tired, in a mind that cannot perform endlessly. i measure myself in mirrors that distort. social media, expectations, imagined futures… they stretch me thin, make me look taller, sharper, more successful than i feel. when i don’t match the reflection, i assume i am the problem, not the glass. because i always have been the problem, the burden, haven’t i? perfectionism promises safety in my mind. it says: if you do everything right, nothing will hurt you. but it lies. blatantly yet subtly. it only delays the pain, compresses it, turns it inward until your inner world feels like a locked room with no windows. perfectionism is a god that demands everything and gives nothing back. it always promises salvation: do this right and you will be safe, loved, chosen. but it never keeps its word. no matter how much you offer it, it asks for more. more effort. more restraint. more sacrifice. it does not forgive. it does not rest. i think i worshipped it like a faithful believer. i made rituals out of overthinking, penance out of self-criticism. i believed that if i could become flawless enough, pain would no longer be able to find me. that rejection would bounce off me. that disappointment would pass me by. that i would finally feel satisfied, enough. i mistook control for protection. but perfectionism, as i said, is hollow. it has no mercy. when you stumble, it does not catch you. it watches. hell, it waits for you to punish yourself first. it convinces you that worth is conditional, that love must be earned daily, that one mistake can erase years of effort. it turns life into a performance where the audience is imaginary but the fear is real. (look, sounds pretty familiar to someone, huh?) what makes it cruel is how respectable it looks. it hides behind praise. “you’re so mature. you’re so disciplined. you have so much potential.” no one warns you that potential can become a threat. that it can turn into a constant accusation, a reminder of everything you are not yet. perfectionism dresses itself as ambition, but inside it is terror: the fear of being seen clearly and still found insufficient. and slowly, without noticing, the god changes shape. it stops being about excellence. it becomes about survival.

sometimes i think i am not afraid of failure.. i am afraid of being ordinary and still deserving love. afraid that without excellence, there is nothing left to excuse my existence. without my achievements and people pleaser empathic behavior, i don’t deserve to breathe. so i keep polishing myself like a relic, terrified that if i stop, i will be forgotten. though i always am. people are used to me winning in different competitions, always saying the right thing, always performing “perfectly”, always attending different events, always having something to recommend (when it comes to movies, books, fanfics, series, music, styles, make up, philosophies, politics, subjects at school, relationships that i never experienced) that they do not care enough to say something anymore. not even a nod. not even a word. and so when they do praise me with words alone, they ring begrudgingly in my ears. they seem fed up by me. and i feel ashamed, guilty for winning. but if i don’t, its worth. either ways, there is no respite for my anxious filled thoughts.

and girls learn early that they are interchangeable. not in obvious ways. of course no one says it out loud, but even if it’s said so, we don’t realize the underlying hidden meanings behind each biting critique. they’re are subtle, but devastating lessons. compliments that expire quickly. attention that shifts without explanation. love that feels provisional, as if it could be withdrawn the moment you fail to remain impressive. you learn that being liked is fragile. that there is always someone prettier, quieter, smarter, easier to love. so you refine yourself. always. you edit your personality. always. you make yourself useful, agreeable, exceptional. always. you become a product that must justify its place. always. and of course there’s the fear that settles in cozily in your very being: “if i stop being perfect, I will be replaced.” this fear is quiet but relentless. it hums beneath everything. in your very core. it’s why girls over-apologize. why they overachieve. why they disappear into relationships, friendships, expectations… anything that promises permanence. it’s why being “chosen” feels like proof of existence. perfectionism feeds on this fear. it whispers that you are only as valuable as your last success, your last good impression, your last moment of being wanted. it turns other girls into mirrors instead of companions. you don’t want to compete with them.. but you feel forced to measure yourself against them anyway. and when you fall short, you don’t blame the system. you blame yourself. always. however no one dares to tell that replaceability is a lie invented to keep girls compliant. you are not a role that can be recast without loss. and you are certainly not an object with a newer version waiting. you are specific. unrepeatable. complicated.  flawed but in your own unique way. and that is precisely why perfectionism feels threatened by you. because perfectionism wants you smooth. predictable. consumable. and girlhood is none of those things. girlhood is messy. it aches. it grows sideways. it feels too much and knows too much too early. it is full of quiet strength that never gets called strength because it does not look impressive, it looks like endurance. and i wish people would tell that you are not replaceable for needing rest. you are not replaceable for being imperfect. you are not replaceable for being fucking human. perhaps the real unlearning is realizing that you never needed a false god to begin with. that your worth was never conditional. that being a girl in this world is already an act of survival. and already enough.

let’s change the topic from ranting to… another ranting. but a bit different one. there is something deeply wrong with the way we are expected to live, and girls feel it first.

we wake up already behind. behind schedules, behind expectations, behind versions of ourselves that exist only as productivity fantasies. time is no longer something we move through. it chases us. only millimeters away from catching us by the sleeve. everything must be optimized, monetized, aestheticized. even rest is measured by how well it prepares us to work again. even grief is expected to be brief. or productive. you see, capitalism doesn’t just want our labor. it wants our identities. it asks us to brand ourselves before we’ve had the chance to know who we are. to turn hobbies into side hustles. emotions into content. trauma into a narrative arc that ends neatly in resilience. there is no room for slowness, for confusion, for the long pauses that real becoming requires. and patriarchy watches all of this and says: “do it beautifully, you brat.” girls are expected to carry exhaustion gracefully. to be tired but presentable, ambitious but never threatening, broken but still useful. our pain is tolerated only when it is quiet, poetic, or profitable (yay). otherwise, it is inconvenient. otherwise, it is called weakness. there is a specific kind of grief that comes from realizing the world is not built for your nervous system. that sensitivity is a liability. that depth is inefficient. that asking too many questions will never be rewarded. so you learn to compress yourself. to think faster. to feel less. to fit in the same standard. to survive a system that treats humans like resources and girls like renewable ones. we are told to lean in, but never given anything solid to lean on. told we can be anything, while being punished for not choosing correctly, quickly, and flawlessly. choice becomes another burden. freedom becomes another performance. and underneath it all is a quiet mourning… for a life that feels impossible now. a slower one, softer one. a life where worth is not tied to output, where girlhood is not a training ground for endurance. where you are allowed to exist without constantly proving that you deserve the space you occupy. and people call this generation lazy, entitled, dramatic. but what they’re really seeing is burnout without the language to name itself. it’s anxiety from every swipe and scroll to be flawless and to fit in. it’s grief without permission. it’s anger that has nowhere to go because anger threatens the system that benefits from our compliance. so what do we do? we internalize it. we call it perfectionism. we call it anxiety. we call it depression. rarely do we call it what it is: a rational response to an irrational world. there is no triumphant ending here. no lesson neatly wrapped in self-care rhetoric. just this truth: you are not failing at life. life, as it is currently structured, is failing to accommodate your humanity. and the fact that you feel hurt, exhaustion, ache is not a personal flaw. it is evidence that some part of you is still paying attention. that part is not weak. never weak. it is awake. and in a world that survives by numbing people, being awake is its own small act of resistance.