Me vs. Perfectionism (Spolier Alert: I Lose)

Growing up, my mother was a neat freak. She would start vacuuming before I even got up in the morning, sometimes, and I was an early riser. We used to joke about this. When she was going through chemotherapy, I took Fridays off from my then job to help her around the house. She asked me to clean the upstairs on more than one occasion and I would always go up there, look around and think: Okay, what the heck does she want me to do here? The floors were spotless, the beds were made, there wasn't a speck of dust to be found. I would go through the motions, but it honestly didn't look any different when I was done because it was perfect to begin with.

I don't know exactly where my perfectionism comes from. I think it started in the 2nd grade. My parents were not wealthy. We sort of managed and squeaked by for years until my mother went back to school and became a registered nurse. When I was a child, we struggled a lot. My parents couldn't afford to send me to dance school (this is something I eventually did on my own, for which I paid out of pocket from the part time job I kept in high school) or gymnastics. They were good parents who did their best. I never went hungry, never wore torn clothes, never froze in the winter. But I went to school alongside the girls who had and had lots. The girls who went to dance lessons at their parents' insistence and resented it. In the 2nd grade, my teacher really favored those girls. In obvious ways that left me frustrated, lonely and hurt. I carried that with me right into adulthood. I knew that my parents had to block off the upstairs of our house in the winter to save money on heat and that I had to sleep in the front room of the house in a sleeping bag during this time. My bedroom and toys were upstairs and these things were not accessible to me during the winter. I knew this wasn't normal. I was embarrassed and ashamed. My mother still kept the house clean and perfect-looking, as perfect as it can be without money for all the trendiest furniture. I got new clothes for school every year, but just so many garments. I received new toys at Christmas, but just so many. Looking back, it was probably a better experience, as it taught me a lot about what truly matters (a loving family), but I was too young to understand that at the time. Instead, I seethed and eventually resolved to the fact that some people have and some people don't have. One year, we couldn't even afford to buy cake mix for my father's birthday cake, so my mother made pancakes and stacked them up, put candles in them and presto! I thought that was really creative and cool then, but I also knew why she was doing it and this made me feel sad and inferior. It drove my need to be like the others. To have the latest clothes and gadgets. I wanted that Family Ties house and the petty Family Ties problems. Add to this my father's insistence that I get straight As, start a job the second I turned sixteen and you have a recipe for perfectionism. Always trying to keep up, always wanting to please my parents. When I became an adult, it functioned on autopilot. It still does. Drinking hushed it, put it on hold.

The problem is it feels like a fucking runaway train. And no one ever told me where the brake switch is. I have no idea how to stop my inner critic like drinking did. I am sitting here, crying, just like I did in the 2nd grade when my teacher told me that I couldn't participate in the talent show because there simply wasn't room (translation: the popular girls will be doing all the routines). How does one stop thinking alcoholically? How do you stop beating yourself up? I feel like a tiny twig spinning around a strong, unstoppable eddy. I know I have to figure out how to correct it, but Jesus, I don't have a single clue as to how. Where's the handbook for that?