My Armor, My Walls, My Perfectionism

Hi Beauties, in this blogpost, I’ll be telling you about my Amor. I’m participating in a leadership development training at work and one of the exercises we did was drawing our armors. Mine was a brick wall and a picture of Anna Wintour which I called Mrs Perfect.

So what is this “Armor”? I define mine as my coping mechanism and the thing which always keeps me on the safe and comfortable side. Sometimes, It feeds my pride and ego.

What that looks like is having a resting bitch face.I am one of those people who usually has a serious face and people tend to say things like, “why are you so serious, is everything okay, you are beautiful, smile”. The truth is my RBF has become so innate that I don’t even realize it.

I have always struggled with perfectionism, like having perfect grades, being the perfect daughter, sister, aunt, friend, always knowing the right thing to say, looking perfect etc that I get so hard on myself when I make mistakes and it takes time for me to recover from any type of failure or any reminder of my flaws. So the way that my armor shows up here is, if I am not sure how something will play out, I don’t even try because I need everything to be perfect or I work extra hard not to give anyone a reason to criticize me or my art.

The last aspect of my armor are my walls. Most of my close friends didn’t like me when they first met me because they thought I was stuck up, bougie and didn’t want to talk to them (RBF showing itself here), but once they got to know me they realized I am none of those things. But sometimes, it could take a lifetime for me to let someone in and be truly vulnerable. I don’t let people get close to me super fast. It’s sad to say, but I know more about most of my friends than they do about me.

I am very careful about what I share with people and what parts of my life I let most people see. It could take you years to fully see and experience Alieh as a whole. I also deal with a lot of personal issues alone and I don’t show emotion or show people how I truly feel in most cases. (I am the girl who will break up with you with a straight, emotionless face even when I am dying inside and go cry alone in my bed because I always have to be strong and need to have it together #truestory)

Why do I have walls?
I have walls because I love hard I give 100% to people when I truly care about someone, When I love and care about you, your needs always come before mine, I will sometimes sacrifice my happiness to make you happy. So, If I trust you and open up to you and you break the trust or show me that it wasn’t worth it, then it breaks me and it could take me a while to recover. So what do I do instead? I build walls so that I never get hurt and have to build myself up and you gotta earn it for me to take down my walls and let you in for you to fully see me as I am.

I have walls because I love hard. I give 100% to people when I truly care about them. When I love and care about you, I usually put your needs before mine, I will sometimes sacrifice my happiness to make you happy. So,  If I trust you and open up to you and you break the trust or show me that it wasn’t worth it then it breaks me and it could take me a while to recover. So what do I do instead? I build walls so that I never get hurt and never have to build myself up. You gotta earn it for me to take down my walls and let you in for you to fully see me as I am.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about my armor and what it means, so here’s what I came up with. I already knew these things and putting a name to it made it more real and made me more self aware. My amor is not a bad thing and there is a reason why I have it. I just need to be able to flex my amor when I am in certain situations and realize that I may need to work harder in certain areas that I struggle with than the average person. As Brene Brown rightly said, vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability.