i am an immoderate woman.

i was talking to a friend who recently started a relationship, and she was discussing how she enjoyed stretching out the days between dates, balancing plans with the guy and her friends, savouring that exhillarating introductory period when everything is new and exciting. and i realised i have no experience of what she was talking about. the idea of deliberately prolonging something is a completely foreign concept to me. in fact, i am thoroughly incapable of a measured approach to anything. it is, without a doubt, my single greatest character flaw – i am fundamentally prone to extremes.

i’ve been known to say that i am great at relationships, but terrible at dating, and that’s because i can’t play by the unwritten rules that everyone else seems to. i’ve only been in love a handful of times in my life, and each time i’ve heedlessly plunged in head over heels – unable to hide my feelings, unable to play it safe, completely inept at feigning coyness or showing caution. “i love you” falls from my lips, unbidden and unreturned. i’ve said yes to marriage within the first six weeks – twice. my heart goes from zero to sixty in nothing flat, only to crash and burn. as brits would say, i am rather full-on. i am, in short, a disaster waiting to happen.

yet, as cognisant as i am of my tendencies for excess in love, i’ve only now fully becoming aware of how those same predilections translate into the rest of my life. examples abound when i open my eyes. i can’t just be a casual jogger – i have to run a marathon. when i was a smoker, i didn’t just smoke – i smoked my brains out. the extent of my addiction to sugar has made jaws drop in astonishment. it makes me shudder to think what would have happened to me if i’d ever done more than lightly dabble in drugs.

but this kind of disposition also carries over into a highly developed internal drive towards perfectionism. there is, of course, my past struggle with eating disorders and body image issues as a case in point. but even growing up, i was extraordinarily self-critical. my mother used to tell me about the time when, as a 7 year old, i saw a television programme about a little girl prodigy my age who’d already read the complete works of shakespeare, and wrote her own award-winning plays and poetry. as my mother tells it, i was absolutely inconsolable over the fact that *i* hadn’t read shakespeare or written plays – that no matter how smart i was, i wasn’t a prodigy and never would be. what seven year old thinks like that? and i would continue to berate myself for such perceived shortcomings. anything i couldn’t be the best at, i quit – ballet, gymnastics, soccer and the flute. to my mind, if i had no hope of being the best (and i recognised i simply didn’t have the talent to do so), then what was the point?

which is a pretty sad, austere way to live one’s life. to hold yourself to standards most ordinary people have no hope of attaining, then feel a failure when you can’t live up to them is terribly harsh. to dive headlong into situations that can hurt you is dangerous. i look back and want to cry for that seven year old who thought she wasn’t good enough, or that young woman who put her heart out there to get trampled on. and the older i get, the more i realise there’s peace to be found in being gentle with yourself. there is merit in moderation and balance. as the end of the year approaches, i’m trying to remind myself that life doesn’t have to be all or nothing. because extremes and perfectionism inevitably lead to heartache – and i’ve had enough of that.

i know i’m probably never going to be the non-judgemental, accepting, laidback person i envision in my head. but i’m slowly figuring out that perhaps working towards that is a better goal than some unrealistic ideal or achievement. that maybe by learning to be better at evening out the sharp edges of black and white in my life, i can learn to be better at being happy amidst the softer shades of grey.

it’s something to aim at anyway.

sarah mclachlan – good enough

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