"A perfectionist? You? You're such a liar."

That's what anyone would say if they saw me. If they saw my messy apartment, my barely-passing grades at school, my shameful performance records at work, my hundreds of projects that never get done.

Everyone always tells me that perfectionists are straight A students who have dozens of awards and accomplishments to their name. When they want to do something good, they go out and do it. They don't just lie around and whine and hope it gets done "someday."

I want so badly to be the right kind of perfectionist, because that's the person who deserves to be happy. That's the person who will never have to worry about keeping her job or getting others to like her or proving her worth. All she has to do is be her innately good self and achieve, achieve, achieve.

And people will tell me that if I'm not that kind of person, then the problem is that I'm lazy and entitled, and apparently it's up to them to tell me that until I shape up and become a high-achieving, worthy person.

I keep hoping that I'll magically transform into this worthy capable person. If I want to be happy, all I have to do is earn it by doing everything perfectly, like the "right" kind of perfectionists do. But for some reason, I make this much harder than it should be.