Perfection

Tiffany Hwang always had to be perfect.

It something she confided in me one day. She told me that she strived for perfection. In what, though, is what I was curious about. Looks? Grades? I wasn’t so sure. The more I observed her, the more I thought it was everything. Everything she set out to do was what she wanted to perfect. If she dolled herself up, she would spend hours getting everything just right. If she had a project due, she wouldn’t sleep the night before just to make sure nothing was out of place. Everything always had to be top-notch, and she would never settle of anything less. I didn’t really have a problem with it. It was more what she thought perfection to be that bothered me. I didn’t have to ask her for her definition of the word for me to know. It was fairly evident already. She would fuss and berate herself over every single mistake she made. To her, every flaw was something that needed to be hidden and forgotten about.

“When can I be perfect?” she muttered to herself one time. She had scored an 89 on an exam that day and wasn’t particularly happy about it.

Nonetheless, I answered, even though the question wasn’t directed towards me.

“When you stop trying to be.”

She barely acknowledged my words, and I briefly wondered if she had even heard me.

But then she shook her head at me and waved off my comment. “You don’t understand,” she told me, and she was right, I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why she did what she did, but I left it alone. She was too upset that day for me to probe any further.

“No, no, this isn’t right.”

It was something I heard her say a lot. “This isn’t right” or “This is wrong,” or “It could be better.” She was rarely satisfied with what she did, always pointing out the things she could’ve done differently or what went wrong.

She broke down in front of me once. To say I didn’t see it coming would be a lie. She cried about all her mistakes, muttering to herself why she did this instead of that or that instead of this.

“What’s done is done. Don’t regret your mistakes; let them make you a better person.”

She gave me a weird look and then got angry with me for some reason. She screamed at me, telling me I didn’t understand and stormed off. She apologized the day after, but there was no explanation for what happened. We both just let it be. I think she knew I was right, and she got angry because she didn’t like that I was. I don’t think she wanted to accept that she spent so much time regretting her mistakes instead of actually doing anything about them.

I blew up at her when she kept telling me how much she hated all her flaws. It wasn’t really “blowing up” at her because I didn’t yell or scold her or anything like that. I just snapped and told her what I really thought. I couldn’t stand that she couldn’t see what I saw.

“You know what? I like your flaws. I’ve always thought that imperfections were what made people so beautiful, you know? I like seeing that side of people. It’s proof to me that even through our faults, we’re still able to be happy. Even though we screw up all the damned time, we’re still able to love and be loved. To me, imperfection is perfection, if that makes any sense. So stop trying to cover up those faults because those are what make you perfect.”

She paused and stared at me for the longest time, her face looking as confused as I’d ever seen it.

“Do you think I’m perfect?” she finally asked.

And I smiled.