Being the perfect girl

I don't know why I'm like this, to be quite honest I'm not a very likeable person. I'm confrontational, I'm cold, I'm vulgar and I'm mentally ill.

 I guess it's to do with the way I was raised, my father was strict. He expected perfection, and if you couldn't deliver you we're screamed at or kicked out of the house, like my brother was when he was 16, resulting in him practically being homeless. Perfection was ordinary, there was no pleasing my father, mainly because he'd try to one up us all the time. "You learned algebra? Don't get cocky, I have a degree and 40 years of experience. You know nothing" was the typical sort of thing he'd say in response to our accomplishments. He told us how to sit, how to talk (absolutely NO slang allowed, even if we were just adapting to our local colloquialisms, it was undignified) what to eat and exercise (he'd always comment on my weight, I'm now struggling with an ed) and so on and so forth. My whole life was structured, I was his show dog that he could show off to his colleagues. "Oh look at how beautiful and talented my daughter is, she can sing, play piano and read sheet music at a very high level". When I was his object was the only time he'd ever acknowledge my achievements, it was so dehumanising but so addicting. Gosh this has rambled on for too long, where was I?

Oh yes, being the perfect girl. 

Because of the way I was raised, perfection is my lowest standard of myself. I have to be the best in EVERYTHING I do. No matter how small, I have to be perfect. Over the years in spite of my Aspergers, I have learned to appease the people around me, I've learned how I should carry myself, and what they'd want me to wear or look like. Should I be a strong motherly woman? Or an innocent ladylike companion? I can tell anything about a person in the drop of a hat. Because I have to be their perfect girl.

Despite having undignified hobbies, dressing in all black and having dyed hair, I can still appease the person I'm talking to. I'm polite, I can do ballet, I can sing, I know how to make you laugh, I laugh at their jokes constantly, my meals are always small and I don't eat it all anyways, I change my emotions when they want me to; but deep down I'm a mess.

Behind closed doors I'm falling apart. I'm an addict, and do bad things to myself, I cry until my eyes sting, I lay there numb and desensitised, I destroy things in anger, I wear dark excessive makeup and I'm very masculine. Only my closest friends see this side of me. And now you get to aswell.

But I don't think I can keep this up for much longer, it's ironic really. The worst parts of my life have gone, but it's NOW that I'm starting to break? How pathetic, I expected more from me. Hell, I've split my life in two just trying to follow my passions, basically having two wardrobes of clothing styles, two dialects and accents, and I should have never taken the mechanics course, it's not so easy to hide once my own wants become a big part of my life (but I can still pass it off as being a designer of vehicles and not so much the labour side). Jesus, I've given myself this much leverage, and I'm still breaking down.

You see I was never the perfect girl. The picturesque "it girl" as they called it, is a lie. I am a lie. If I was a lost cause from the start, I would've been able to express myself freely. I wouldn't have all these expectations of how I should be, I would've never heald the weight of being the only trophie child my parents had adopted and so generously brought up to be a good lady. Sure I probably would've been disowned a lot younger but my father could always just beat the sense into me, like he sometimes did. Then I'd actually have some physical reason for my inner pain.

Every day I asked myself "why couldn't you have just been normal, the expectations aren't even that bad, you're just a freak". And the worst thing is I'm right, if I was normal I wouldn't have to fake being the perfect girl, but if I was that perfect girl; I wouldn't be any fun would I?