You're not a realist you're a bitch

on self-loathing and perfectionism

I’ll set the scene. You’re 14 years old sat in Spanish class. The air is warm and your blazer is uncomfortable. Your heels are blistered from your new school shoes and Your thighs are stuck to the blue. plastic chair. Conversation of verb conjugation and weekend plans buzzes around you like white noise.

You tune in just in time to hear your Spanish teacher tell someone “I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist”, and just like that, something clicks. Brilliant. I’ll be using that one.

By now, you’re well aquainted with the term pessimist, and you’ll happily embody it as long as no one labels you as one. ‘Realist’ tastes better on the tongue, you realise. The foundations have been there for a while, and you think back to the school trip you took at 12 years old when the trip leader criticised your closed mindset. She’d known you for five days.

Like every year, your school report is sent out. Your teachers condense your performance into a paragraph of three lines, almost every one recognising that you’re too hard on yourself. You put yourself down too much. Your heart does a little flutter of pride. Why is that?

Maybe it’s a genuine belief in your own inadequacy. Or maybe you’re a 15 year old girl at an academically rigorous girls’ school and the only acceptable perception of yourself is one of disappointment. Pride is distasteful. Confidence makes you a bitch. No, you have to be small and quiet and work yourself to the bone and recognise that you’re still not doing enough. Cruelty is classy when it’s self-inflicted.

That’s better.

And so, after that Spanish lesson, it became my justification. If anyone ever rolled their eyes at my unfounded deprecation of grades, or someone groaned at my devotion to the worse outcome, I’d say the words: “I’m not being pessimistic, I’m just being realistic".

No, babe, you’re just fucking miserable.

I think back to my 15 year old self and cringe. The fact there are people that walk the earth who hear my name and think of this version of me makes me want to scream out loud:

‘I’m normal now!”

She wore misery like a badge of honour and sadness like a cloak, its fabric itchy and uncomfortable in a way she enjoyed. She made artful playlists specifically to be sad to, poring over the choices which would evoke the worst. She didn’t start out sad when she pressed play. No, this was curated.

Some would call this a cry for help. Some would call it being a teenage girl.

She ate one meal a day, pretending that she was too busy for anything else. It didn’t bother her that no one else thought this was a problem. In fact, her friends were the same.

That’s the way it was.

If you were happy at the age of 15, best believe everyone thought you were a weirdo. Joy is NOT the status quo.

She fell deeper and deeper into the comfort of it. Her ribs were snapped from the battering of herself but the bruises were cool to look at.

After months of fulfilling her role as a realist, she got her exam results and revelled in the way her teachers said “I told you so”, or “now do you believe me?”

Spoiler alert: she didn’t

She doubled down. Infinitely dissatisfied with herself. She wrote extra essays to ‘practice’ when she was already getting good grades. She spent lunchtimes alone to focus on her work, or walked laps of the school in a misguided show of wellness.

She ran fast and hit a wall when she was forced to stop, and that’s when I learned how to exist outside of grades.

I took a year out before university. I went to Spain for a while and came back, worked for a few months and gave it up. I read a lot and felt a lot and sat under the sun and learned how to be.

Now I’m 22, I think I’m still inclined to pessimism. It’s a muscle memory I spent years exercising, and it’s a more conscious effort to dismantle that internal narrative. In the face of anything, my first instinct is self-doubt, but these days, it’s chased away with more neutral optimism. My friends and I discuss the good parts of our day, the roses, because there always is one. While I roll my eyes (I don’t know why! The 15 year old me persists), I secretly enjoy it.

I still want good grades, I still complain if I don’t meet my expectations, but this year came in the form of a sort of breakthrough when I sat sobbing over a grade and wrote a whole substack post over it. It wasn’t remotedly a bad grade, but I had set my expectations too high and made myself persistently miserable with my consistent failure in meeting them. The weight of disappointment was too heavy. My shoulders ached and my spine was bent and so I changed them. Since then, I’ve had pretty good posture.

It’s embarrassing really that it hadn’t occurred to me before, or maybe it had but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. There’s no life or death attached to me getting the highest grade. I won’t be kicked out of university for getting a grade below the top one. I can lower the rungs I have to climb and still be proud when I make it to the top. The 15 year old me that still clings somewhere deep inside definitely viewed that as a failure. It’s off brand to get anything but the highest possible grade.

But then again, according to her it’s also off brand to enjoy. To delete your sad songs playlist, to read for fun and not just to write on an application to prove your dedication to your studies. To be optimistic and not pessimistic. Oh, wait, sorry; realistic.

The endless plight of being a perfectionist is that perfection doesn’t exist. You’re chasing a high that you’ll never reach and the journey itself becomes addictive. especially when you never run out of tarmac. They won’t let you. You were made for this sprint. Get running.

I don’t think it’s my fault I was a miserable bitch. It comes with the territory. Maybe my hubris came in the strength which while I clung to it. A heavy blanket which slowed my movements and made my body ache with the effort of carrying it. Nevertheless, it comforts you in its presence. You’re never alone if you make a home for misery.

When you’re a woman, liking yourself is an act of resistance. It takes years to nurture. It’s more comfortable to express self-hatred, to join the noise about your body or your grades or your face. Especially when everyone around you is the same.

We exist under a hydraulic press, squeezing and squeezing. Be quiet, be thin, be sad and dull and work hard. It pushes down on our chests and the ache is so persistent. The only way to find relief is to punish women the same way you are.

The women that hate you hate themselves more. They’ll claw at your ankles when you try to run, draining your blood until you’re hollow. Crumpled in a pile with the rest of them.

Compassion is currency in a society that profits on hate. Of the self, of the other, of it all.

Practice more joy, for the love of God. Listen to the music that makes you dance in your room, even if you try not to. Watch the reality tv that the men in your life would criticise. Better yet, get rid of said men. Show yourself the kindness that you deserve, even when everything in you resists.

Exercise the muscle of self-compassion until it comes easily.