During the week of February 21st, I played in two football matches. I rehearsed, dress rehearsed and performed a short theatrical piece I wrote, directed, designed and acted in. Meanwhile, I had to complete my Extended Essay, French oral, and balance deadlines for other IAs and whatnot. I completed the week with heroic effort and then the trouble really began. In the next two weeks, I performed at my worst ever on a Math Mock Exam. I turned in a portfolio for theater I was only partially satisfied with. And, I just used a prepositional at the end of my previous sentence. I was defeated, struggling to cope with my glaring inability to perform above my innate imperfection.
It's not the months of waiting to hear if an admissions' office deign to acknowledge my deserving existence, but it certainly doesn't help. It's not the people who belittle my existence with a look, but they don't accomplish anything positive. It's not the school that still pushes me to its outskirts a year ad a half after I half-heartedly drove through its gates, but it's not an encouragement. It is the sum of the parts, the weight in its entirety that has conquered my defiant shoulders.
To me, the world had won. My desire to remain true to my identity, my faith, my character seemed to have been buried under the hundreds of pages my printer spits out every week. It has been a forsaken spell of hearing others celebrate their dreams' fruition while March 30 haunts my dreams. At the end of the day, however, I lost my way. I thought that a superhuman mantra of responsibility and excellence would get me places. -Eeeen- Wrong.
I am imperfect. But not in this way. I am the girl who takes time out of her homework to watch middle schoolers turn the game of Signs into chaos and then remind them that God is the only constant in said chaos. I may also, from time to time, allude to the Jonas Brothers. I procrastinate by figuring out chemistry puns. I read old Nancy Drew mysteries and allow myself to be surprised at the all-too predictable endings. I'm a serial dreamer. Every night, when I let my parents know I'm in bed, two golden bundles hurtle down the hall and land on top of me, licking my face and snuggling into my legs.
I am NOT a being driven by a desire for status or material success. I am NOT ashamed of my family's simple economic beginnings. I AM, after all, the daughter of a Baptist minister-turned-missionary-turned-almost teacher. I am not always a straight-A student. In fact, when I was in fifth grade, my penmanship got a C. I am imperfect, in all these ways.
Will I get my predicted grade on my IB diploma? There is no certainty, no glimmer of impending perfection. Will I do my best? There is more certainty but sometimes our best is commandeered by our worst.
I am imperfect. My Heavenly Father is not. And that, my friends, is the bottom line. I promised myself that a change in school would not end in a change in identity. For a few months, it was forgotten in a rush of what I thought was the new and improved. I would say never again, but ultimatums rarely last in this life. Still, here's to embracing imperfection and growth without loss.
"the figure near at hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honored, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire."
- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
