Complacency is a Learned Skill

sometimes, expectations are so high that it is a relief to fail. the psat's may sound like a joke to most people, especially those who are already adults (and in the long run, i'm sure they are), but from where i stand, they loom large in my rearview mirror. when you go into a test like that expecting to earn >230/240 and to be comfortably within the top 1%, failure becomes a peculiar creature at once remote and horrifying. 220 may not be failure to most people, but it sure would feel like it to me. that doesn't make me better or worse, it just means some of my numbers lined up in that genetic intellectual lottery and landed me in a peculiar spot where the stakes are roughly the same for my own happiness, but the scoring is so skewed that the people around me take notice.
i am afraid to take the SATs, not because i fear doing badly, but because i fear not doing well. of all my friends who have taken it so far and who are considered "comparable" students, no one has gotten less than a 2350. that leaves room for maybe one or two wrong answers, depending on the section. there are 171 questions on the exam.
it's stupid, stupid, stupid that i should even care, but i do not consider myself a "smart person" and need constant reassurance that i deserve the company i keep. complacency is a learned skill. to get there, i need to do one of two things:

1. believe that i am beyond the point where these sorts of tests have any real bearing on me or can accurately measure my "ability"
2. learn to be content with what i have. that sounds so strange, but every time i hear someone say that early decision applications are for people content with their junior year grades, i think, "i wish i had good enough grades for that." my gpa is a 97, unweighted, taking the most difficult classes available to me. when did i become so unreasonable?

the second would surely be better for my mental health, but i don't want to regret not expecting enough at the end of my life. so i will probably choose the first, and settle for being miserable but fulfilled, if that's even logical.