I don't like to admit when I'm wrong. I think it's probably one of the hardest things we are asked to do as seemingly responsible, mature adults. I know I have weaknesses; I know I have failings. These make me more human than I'd like but they also make me more aware that imperfection is bliss.
I wasn't always so certain that imperfection should be my aim. The realization hit me, quite literally, in the face a few days ago. Then, I was not a responsible or mature adult. I was a foolish girl overcome with the desire to be completely senseless. As a result, I now look like a victim of road rage, or at least a bar fight. My face is scratched and bruised. People can't help but stare, and I can't help but wonder how I got to this point.
I used to think I could make myself whoever I wanted to be. I could create the person even if she had no chance of ever actually existing. It was liberating, and it worked for a while. I successfully figured out how to make myself hot (eighth grade), smart (11th grade) and confident (12th grade). Mary Scott was capable of anything; she could transform.
It didn't take long to figure out that this wasn't enough. Once on the road to perfection, once caught in the throes of creating a person in the place of you, enough has no meaning.
I decided perfection was tantamount to happiness - and who doesn't want to be happy? My obsession with perfection was so great it had to manifest itself in some form; I had to have some concrete way to deal with my pursuit of the perfect me. I contemplated different methods, tried out various ideas, but nothing was good enough. Nothing put me in total control of my fate; nothing made me the proper agent of change. Until one day, sitting at the dinner table, recounting tales from school to my mother, wondering how I could make the next day better, I looked down at my plate. I held the fork that scooped up the peas that cut the chicken that went into my mouth; I controlled whether I finished my dinner or not. I felt power surge to my brain and decided then and there to stop eating.
For three years I was terrified of food. Food represented everything I didn't want, from the obvious fear of weight gain, to the more obscure but still related fear of failing. I couldn't make my SAT scores any higher, I couldn't grow any taller or make myself worry less. I couldn't make the new Mary Scott I had dreamed of, and so I made the regular Mary Scott a rigid, controlled machine.
At the peak of my eating disorder I was perfect by all accounts. I was tan and thin, I was going to U.Va. in the fall, I had a boyfriend, I went to States for my debate team, I was surrounded by loving family and friends and pets. Yet I was miserable. I was so caught up in my obsession that absolutely nothing else mattered. I wasn't even excited for college - the words "freshman 15" haunted me every night that summer. I had craved certainty so badly that I became certain of only one thing - don't let yourself go.
When I got to U.Va. I loosened up a bit my first semester, mostly because I didn't want strangers to think there was something terribly wrong with such an uptight college kid. I stalked the AFC twice a day when I could, at least once a day to maintain my sanity. I skipped out on lunch dates with my friends so I could get away with eating only a granola bar all day. I was lost and I knew it, but I could not admit that what I was doing was wrong.
Everyone has a breaking point, even perfect people, and so winter of last year, I got help. It wasn't simple or easy or groundbreaking, but it worked. I finally was able to transform: I could tell there was distinct difference between the old Mary Scott and the new Mary Scott. And it had a lot to do with happiness.
Once my fear of food lessened, my enjoyment of all things exploded. I took Blake's "Exuberance is beauty" and ran with it. Everything that seemed normal - dinner at the dining hall, going out on the weekends, procrastinating in Clemons - became new and pure and exciting. For the first time in a long time I looked forward to what came next, whatever it might be.
Which brings me to tonight, to the moment in Clark bathroom when a girl saw my face in the mirror and looking concerned, turned and asked "Did someone hit you?" Yes, concerned stranger, someone did hit me. Her name is Mary Scott, and she has no intention of letting up the beatings any time soon.
One obsession had turned into another. Once I realized I actually could enjoy life, I became obsessed with enjoying it to the fullest. My focus on "having fun" has put me walking down dark streets by myself, has put me with people I barely know, has put me in places I can't remember and has put me face down in a parking lot, leaving marks I won't forget.
So at what point do I realize that everything is going to be OK? I don't. Because sometimes what is OK is for everything to be confusing and muddled and a complete mess. Imperfection is bliss. I never have tried to be imperfect. I only ever have pursued perfection, be it through controlling my diet, or through embracing irresponsibility - I want to do everything to the fullest. But fulfillment is too close to perfection. This is what a stranger helped me see in a bathroom in a library at 1 a.m. I've been wrong, in the past, in the present, and it's hard, but I'll admit it. There's nothing to do now but to let Mary Scott be, for once, to be, without any transformations or identity restructuring in the works. Because she needs a chance to find her bliss.
Mary Scott's column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at m.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
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