I was there the day my dad shut the door of his vacated apartment for the last time. He had moved from one floor of the Riverside Presbyterian Apartments, Jacksonville Florida, to another.  Before he turned in his key, he wanted to do just a few final chores.

I helped him. He was meticulously clean and tidy so scrubbing out his tub would be a piece of cake. Except, back then, for me, nothing  was a piece of cake. So even though the tub wasn’t dirty,  I scrubbed it as though it was.

As I worked an old toothbrush into every clean crevice, my dad walked past and casually laid down a sentence that felt like a punch in the gut. A casual sentence that made my life a whole lot easier. Eventually.

“Don’t get all alcoholic about it.”

What?  My thoughts reeled, I’m not all alcoholic.

I backed off on my scrubbing and gave the tub a rinse.

It took a few years, but those 6 expertly placed wounding words cured me of my perfectionism.

Before those words I took pride in perfection.

But my brilliant dad paired my perfectionism with his disease.

Perfectionism suddenly became imperfection.

And I certainly did not want to be lumped with imperfection.

Like I said, it took some years.

I still have the occasional relapse, and when I do, I see my young self bent over that bathtub scrubbing alcoholically and I hear those wounding, healing words.

“Don’t get all alcoholic about it.”

Thanks, dad, for killing it.

#perfection

For more about my dad and his disease: Concerning Hope