Almost Perfect

As salaam alaikum,

When I started practicing Islam, I was a perfectionist. There is nothing in Islam that would discourage this. I came to this faith as a nominal Muslim teenager who knew a few rituals, salat and a few heavily-accented (as in English accent) Arabic utterances, not nearly enough to convince anyone I was Muslim. So I played major catchup.

But I digress. I came into practice of this faith because I believed that it was the straight way (and I still do), and I wanted to follow that way. This was the way for me to be almost perfect, almost completely perfect as God commands us by avoiding the major sins and seeking daily (five time daily and once annually, through Ramadan) forgiveness for all of my faults. My sins would be as good as erased every Ramadan, and anyway, they'd be tiny ones because, having been shown the straight way, how could I err?

Wouldn't I be a disbeliever upon erring?

I came into the practice of this religion without properly knowing that the straight way is not singular or self-evident in terms of steps one should take to achieve that almost perfection I aspired to.

I keep making mistakes. Sometimes I make them multiple times. I tried so hard for almost perfect but I never was.

So where does this leave me? If I decide to no longer try being almost perfect, then where does that leave me?