Hello, my name is Diane, and I haven't been perfect for two years.

I used to be in group therapy. It was the most civilization I've ever seen achieved, using the fewest rules I've ever seen. But rules are not everything, are they? You weren't really "in therapy" until you had a contract on the wall. It was a contract with yourself; you could say anything you wanted to. All I had to do was say how I expected to be different when I finished therapy.

That's a hell of a thing to think about when you're not even sure what therapy is.

I worked for four months on my first contract. It had to be perfect. Six goals, perfectly stated, each one a check or balance on another, each one checked or balanced by at least one other. Many of the contracts were done in crayon, but I did mine on a laser printer--24 point Cooper Black, so I could read it from across the room. Spell-checked, of course. I had lots of goals for my contract, and I did it: One page. Clearly stated. Always visible. Self-checking. Type-set. Four months. Perfection.

Not finishing my contract meant that I didn't have to start working on achieving my goals. You see, goal number one was to stop being a perfectionist. What if I couldn't not be perfect?

First, the contract wasn't perfect. I had to add a goal. I added it in crayon, so that the perfect contract would be perfectly defaced.

Then I had to rate myself: zero for where I was when I started therapy, and ten for where I wanted to be when I finished therapy. How could I rate myself as a non-perfectionist? How could I live if I did not achieve a perfect 10? When I left, I rated myself 7.83. If I wasn't perfect at being a non-perfectionist, I could always say that I was still working on it.

I'm still working on not being perfect. I don't ever intend to be perfectly imperfect, only to approach it.