Now that I'm a grown up with kids, I can only imagine the problems I caused my parents growing up. I wouldn't like my kids to take after me in doing some of the things I did to my parents. Though I do not have a vivid understanding of all I did back then, one thing I do remember is that I cried a lot as a little kid over things other kids overlooked. Heck, I was such an annoying little boy.
The first time I knew I had a serious problem was in my final year in senior secondary school. While preparing for the Senior School Certificate Examination, our English teacher devised a means to help us sharpen our knowledge of English Language in the Essay and Letter Writing part. She'd give us tough assignments to do and instead of marking it by herself, she'd guide us through the answer and instruct us to swap our books with classmates for marking.
After marking someone else's assignment according to our discretions, we'd return the books to the owners. The method was very effective as we get to see the good, the bad and the ugly. We were learning from each other's mistakes or brilliance - it was more than that to me anyway.
In Senior School I and II I was the best student in the English subject in the whole school. I wasn't particularly strong in the essay part but my vast knowledge of the other aspects of English grammar compensated for my perceived weakness. Due to this, my classmates were always eager to swap their assignments with me. This very effective assignment swapping stuff was the first pointer to a very important skill that will cause me a great deal of pain and an indescribable amount of joy in the near future.
About three weeks into the assignment swapping practice, I suddenly noticed my classmates were reluctant to swap their assignments with me. I felt they were just being silly and scared. I never knew how serious it was until my best female pal - who happens to be the female senior prefect in the school - confronted me about my sadistic way of marking other people's assignments.
The instruction from the teacher was that every grammatical error spotted in an assignment should be scored as minus five (-5). The total mark for each assignment was 30. Then, I would go ahead and spot at least 50 errors, sometimes more. Eventually, most of the assignments I marked scored less than 5. I was brutal enough to even record a minus score on a couple of occasions after spotting more than 60 errors. While I felt good about this, others felt bad about it.
It took my gal pal's harsh reprimand before I realized I was somewhat a perfectionist - I see the most minute of errors and it always excites me to point it out. She recounted instances where I've used this double-edged sword of a skill to hurt people who loved me. I was sober, but I wasn't repentant. I believe being able to spot errors quickly is a wonderful skill; wanting everything to be perfect is admirable. I was handed a loaded gun of a skill, I shot it consistently without aim or reason. I lost a lot.
It took a lot of maturing and a lost relationship to finally admit I was hurting people. My perfectionist skill made me a wonderful organizer of things; it also made me a reckless destroyer of important things I perceived to be imperfect. In short, I broke a lot of things while in search of perfection - things that were meant to be imperfect. My first real relationship crashed because I wanted my ex to be so perfect that I started doctoring her life, unknowingly. Eventually, she got fed up with being made to feel inadequate or not good enough. She moved on.
Today, my skill has lost me a lot of things, it has gained me so much more too. I've learnt empathy, I've gotten emotionally mature to know when to use my skill and when not to. I no longer hurt the people I love with my skill. I've learnt to overlook insignificant errors and correct with love and respect the significant ones. Thinking back now, I feel a lot of pity for my parents who witnessed firsthand my inability to show empathy in making corrections. I wouldn't want a kid like me. And if any of my kids were to develop such a skill, I'll guide him or her with love and respect. They won't make the mistakes I made.
