Less Than Perfect

I think Pink is following me.

She keeps popping up everywhere, which isn’t normal for me because I’m actually not a fan. Normally if one of her songs comes on the radio I change the station. (I think it started after the “U +Ur Hand” fiasco, because (1) I’m not overly prudish but I do think that song demonstrates a certain lack of class, but also (2) Hello? Grammar? Must we spell song titles this way?)

But last week I was driving home from a particularly emotional session with my therapist. I was all caught up in my own head so I didn’t notice there was a Pink song on the radio, but the lyrics in the chorus caught my attention:

Pretty, pretty please, don’t you ever, ever feel,
Like you’re less than, less than perfect.
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel,
Like you’re nothing, you are perfect to me.

And suddenly I was bawling. Driving down the road, bawling. (And in the midst of that big cry I thought of Tonya’s post, which I love even more now.)

At the time I didn’t even pay attention to the rest of the words in the song, which are actually quite, well, perfect:

You’re so mean, when you talk, about yourself you were wrong.
Change the voices, in your head, make them like you instead.

(Let’s just ignore the next line, shall we? “So complicated, look happy, you’ll make it!” I tried that approach for 18 months and look where it got me.)

So, recognizing this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous, I will say this: for some reason, I finally processed something that day. I’m not perfect, I’m not ever going to be perfect, and that’s okay. Sort of. All right, fine, I’m still working on it, but I get it. I’ve got to start cutting myself some slack.

I heard the song a couple more times shortly after, and I’ve been thinking about the idea of “perfect” a lot. I’m a self-defeating perfectionist in all aspects of my life, not just in the mom realm. I’m not a fast enough runner. My absolutely horrific sense of direction is proof I’m not very smart. I’m failing as an adult because I’m chained to recipes instead of being able to whip up a meal from pantry ingredients the way my husband can. I’m not as good as I’d like to be at my job. And don’t even get me started on body image. Oy, vey.

So…I’m not perfect.

In carrying on with my week, I started hearing – and liking – another, much more upbeat, Pink song: Raise Your Glass. Don’t get me wrong, I could never get away with saying things like “gangsta” and I don’t think I know what “too school for cool” even means. I just kind of dig it. Plus, hearing those two songs in that order feels like a transition to me – moving from feeling truly awful and beating myself up every day to trying to do better at appreciating who I am and what I’ve got.

And then she appeared again. A bit later last week I was watching Glee and one of the numbers just happened to be… a Pink song. Raise Your Glass, actually. Perfect.

(Confession: I thought it was especially awesome because I have a full-on schoolgirl crush on Blaine. Yes, I know the actor is 24. I didn’t say I was proud of this. Just…tell me you don’t think that guy is dreamy?! )

Ahem. Anyway…

The thing that happened next is where it gets weird. A colleague sent me an email last weekend after I had been thinking about all of this and, with some very kind words of support, suggested I listen to a song. A song that she thought might be a good one for me to listen to as I work on pulling myself out of this recurring bout of PPD. It was a song by Pink: Raise Your Glass.

You don’t have to tell me eight times. There’s a message here.

I’ve heard it.

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A comment: If you’d like to listen to the first song, you can do that here – or from the linked song title above – by clicking “listen now”.

A warning: the video below is to the explicit version of the song – so don’t watch it with your kiddies around. And also, it’s really quite graphic. The first time I watched it I was horrified. And then I made myself watch it again and I can actually see the beauty in it.