My Obsession with Being Good

My teacher tells my parents I talk too much during a parent-teacher conference for kindergarten. It’s why I didn’t get Student of the Month. I’m disappointed to hear this. I want this recognition. I want the navy blue pin. I want to be seen as good. I do my best to get the sought-after pin. 

I fold my hands on my desk. I stop talking when the teacher wants the classroom to be quiet. I get straight A’s. When I come home from school, I sit at my desk to do my homework. I spend a couple of hours each night studying for tests. I know how to be good. 

Merriam-Webster defines good as “of a favorable character or tendency, agreeable, pleasant, adequate, or satisfactory.” I strive to be all of these things. I take it a step further and the goalpost gets moved to perfection. 

“What would it look like for you to be good enough? I want you to journal about that,” my therapist says. 

I take some time to mull over my answer. It doesn’t come immediately, and I don’t journal about it. I think and think. The answer finally arrives. 

In order to be good enough, I need to be liked by everyone. I need to be great at everything I set out to do. I can’t make little mistakes. I need to be charming. I need to be put together. I need to be perfect.

And there it is: To be good enough, I need to be perfect.

I laugh at myself. I laugh at my impossible standards. “Wow, if I need to be perfect, then I’ll never be good enough.” It dawned on me that I needed to change my definition of what it means to be good. 

The performance of being good won’t make me good enough in my eyes. I will keep moving the goalpost. It’s a standard I will never reach because my standards don’t exist. They’re impossible. 

For as long as I can remember, being good meant making myself as small as possible. It meant not taking up space. Doing what others expected of me. Hardly saying no. Being agreeable.

I wonder what I was like before I became obsessed with being good. What would it be like to break up with the manufactured version of myself? 

What does it mean to be good enough? 

My definition no longer excludes being good to myself. It means valuing myself as much as I value others. It means taking up space. It means letting my desires be known. Being good enough is existing exactly as I am.