How does this sound ??? I'm a senior applying for a scholarship.

How does this sound ??? I'm a senior applying for a scholarship.

I could see warning signs from hindsight. My obsession with only giving perfection was obvious. I sometimes felt as if I was incapable of living, not because of a sickness or illness, but because I was trapped in my own anxiety.

Being the first and only daughter of a single mother, all I have ever wanted to do was make her proud. By achieving high academic grades I knew she would always be happy with me. By fourteen, I was convinced everything I did from homework to housework had to be perfect. My biggest fear was to fail and let her down.

Although my own stress was my motivation, my mother’s support was not always there. My mother was completely different from my friends’ moms; she was aggressive and seemed to always be angry. When I was very young, I realized that my mom is the way she is not to be mean or unfair, but because it was her natural personality and that was something I could never change about her.

“You are such a disappointment!” my mother would reiterate countless times everyday. At the beginning it hurt me to hear such words come out someone who is supposed to support me every step of the way, but after a while I began to use her mean spirit and awful words to encourage my quality in everything I did.

It was the beginning of a long imperfect journey. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much I achieved, it was never enough. My anxiety to be perfect was only getting worse and the worse it got, the more everything began to fall over my shoulders like a weight that was too heavy to be lifted. I would spend hours on one assignment. I would spend hours cleaning the house to where it was spotless.

im still not finished. any ideas on how i can finish?