Perfection

Never in a million years would I have described myself as a perfectionist. Driven? Certainly. Ambitious? Sure. Full of lots of other neuroses? You betcha. But a perfectionist? Nah. I was, after all, mostly a B student, and pretty happy with that, so how could I be a perfectionist? I guess we've been coming around to this for a while in therapy, but the thing with therapy is that, when it's working, it leads you up to the door, but when you finally fling it open it's both obvious and like you never saw it coming. So I missed out on dancing to the 80s tonight (hang in there, this isn't as unrelated as it seems at first) because I came home from work today to discover the cat doing this weird thing with her mouth and I'm a spazz and opted to take her to the emergency vet (she's fine; rather, more specifically, the vet can't find anything wrong with her). And I'm driving home, feeling all out of sorts, and trying to decide who I want to call when I get home to talk this out and make myself feel better. Then I start thinking, well, talk what out? What is it I need to work through? And finally I come around to it - I'm worried about whether or not I made the right decision. WTF? And suddenly I'm remembering all those vague, crappy feelings in the pit of my stomach from who knows how many times in the past and finally connecting the dots that those feelings were me gnawing away at a decision I had already made. Again, WTF? That isn't like me. Or rather, isn't like the version of my personality I hold in my head. In fact, the exact opposite is one of my skills. I may not always be decisive, but once I've landed on something I accept that that's what I've decided and the consequences of that decision, just like the grown-up person that I am. Certainly by now I can handle making independent decisions about a) my social life and b) my cat. So, one more time, WTF? What's up with this idea that I'm not 'allowed' to make a 'wrong' decision and therefore spend time mulling over decisions I've already made and can't change? Where did that come from?