29!

So about two weeks ago I turned 29. I got lunch at Applebee’s with a couple of my Philly friends, had a good grief cry in my apartment after they left, and then read books on my couch. All in all, it was one of my best birthdays yet. I love quiet time with myself and with people whose company I enjoy much more than flashy or effortful events, so even just spending time in my apartment with myself felt iconic.

One thing I’ve been processing with myself and in some of my previous blog posts is that my life isn’t perfect. For anyone with any ounce of mental stability, you may be thinking to yourself, Thomas, duh, how’d you even get a phd you stupid salacious sycophantic Gaysian sub, no one or very few people have a perfect life.

But for those who’ve read my blog for a little while, you know I grew up with an abusive mother, a financially supportive yet emotionally neglectful father, a laptop in which I used to write explicit Naruto fanfiction during my teen years (wait, this last one isn’t like the others…), blah blah. Anyway, I remember when I was in the sixth grade or so, I was crying to myself in the basement of my childhood home after my mom had yelled at me, and in that moment I decided that to give my life meaning in the face of pure and utter agony I would pursue a life path that involved helping others. I very briefly toyed with the idea of teaching at the high school level or becoming a civil rights lawyer, though quickly redirected my energy to becoming a psychologist, a career I had envisioned for myself since around the age of eight.

Four years of high school, four years of undergrad, and six years of graduate school later, I am now a psychologist! I started this blog either in my freshman or sophomore year of high school, so for better or worse because I’ve said some wild shit on here many of you have accompanied me for the wild ride it’s been.

Back to the point of this post, here are a smattering of life’s imperfections right now:

1) I’m currently studying for this heinous exam I have to take later this summer for licensure. It’s 225 questions across four hours and what’s worse is that many of the things they’re testing on aren’t even clinically relevant. At least I’m not married or dating a mediocre man, and at the same time, it’s heinous.

2) I’m still figuring out community and friendship in Philly. I’ve made some cool friends though I’m reminding myself I didn’t meet my closest DC friends until a few years into graduate school, so the process can take time and that’s okay. Also I love the time I spend on my own so I always have that.

3) In my apartment there’s a random hole in the wall below a window, right above the air conditioning unit. The maintenance people at my apartment complex are amazing and after they worked on this for a bit the hole is still there so… well, I’d rather have a hole in my apartment than a hole in my heart due to having settled for a mediocre man.

4) Racism and fatphobia and femmephobia in the gay community, as well as heteronormativity and amatonormativity in broader society. I won’t get into this though it is annoying!

5) I get canker sores occasionally? I’m gay, Viet, a survivor of child abuse and I have to suffer from canker sores? I blame my past life for having voted for Ronald Reagan, a choice that has led to all the suffering I’ve experienced in my present life.

I guess all of this is to say, achieving my primary goal in life didn’t magically make everything in my life perfect. At the same time, I will say that my life is a lot better than it ever has been. My best friendships are flourishing, my job is stable and enjoyable and meaningful and I don’t have to move for the foreseeable future, my local public library is fabulous (though underfunded, which is wild because the US government has money to fund genocide abroad but… anyway), my mental health is the best it’s ever been and I’ve found a great therapist in case it takes a nosedive, and I’m loving being romantically single and coming home to myself and my own spacious, sparsely decorated apartment.

I suppose for a lot of my life I’ve used perfectionism as a defense – against my mother’s abuse, against subsequent abuse by some work supervisors, against the lack of control I’ve felt over racism and white supremacy I’ve faced in relation to interacting with other gay men. In some ways, my drive toward perfectionism – or as one of my previous therapists liked to say, excellence, instead of perfectionism – has helped me and continues to do so, with my career and friendships and hobbies. Though, I’m learning to take some deep breaths, touch some grass (i.e., the fabric of my couch while I lay on top of it and read my books), and ease up on the perfectionism. I imagine I’ll work on navigating this drive toward perfectionism now at 29, next year at 30, 13 years from now at 42, however many years will get me to 69, and so on, and so forth.

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How do you navigate perfectionism or imperfections in your life at various life stages? General reactions to this post? Also, this is random but I wanted to share some teaching evals (AKA what I’ve spent so much time on these past several months). I taught two courses in the spring, one which I loved and thought I did a great job in and the other I honestly thought was a flop. But, even though the class wasn’t perfect, students still seemed to like the class I thought was a flop! I’m sharing some of the anonymous feedback below because it makes me smile (and, it’s not all perfect and that’s okay too):

Honestly it’s so sweet that students took the time to write this all out! I am honored. And I was pleasantly surprised because I really was expecting much worse.

Okay these ones were both sweet and made me laugh because I literally sometimes just say whatever comes to mind when I’m up there like… well, I suppose I could do worse.