I Thought One Day I’d Be Perfect

But I’m Just Human

⚠️ Note before you read: this article touches on trauma, C-PTSD, and the painful process of accepting our human limitations. If you’re in a vulnerable place right now, read with care and be gentle with yourself. If you’re having thoughts of self-harm or harming others, please reach out to a crisis line. In Canada and USA call 988, in Canada text 45645, or list of Suicide Crisis Line of all countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines. You’re not alone. 💛

I know some of you might think I’m so unrealistic. But I bet some of us, somewhere deep down, carry a quiet hope that one day we simply wish we didn’t hurt anymore.

I think I knew it cognitively, but deep inside there was an energy, a belief, that hoped for a perfect life, a perfect result. I went through something similar before, about my wish for society to be perfect. I used to be so angry about the world, it was unbearable. I see so many people in that place and I can recognize them. That desperate hope that the world, and ourselves, will one day be kind, happy, healed.

This time, it seems, I’m going through it at my own individual level.

I thought one day I’d be perfect.

I thought one day I’d have no triggers, I’d be assertive, not aggressive, not passive, just right. I’d be kind. I’d have a body I’d like and I’d be ok showing off, I’d have no physical pain. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’d have a job I loved and a business that helped people and paid my bills and more. I’d stay calm. I wouldn’t cry as much, although I like my tears 😊. I’d be happy, joyful. I’d understand everything, with some kind of mathematical formula that makes sense. I’d always be right, and if not, I’d apologize and accept it. I wouldn’t feel fear, sadness, anger, all those emotions we don’t like. I’d be healed. I’d have enough money to stop worrying about pennies. I’d never argue with the people I love…

(breathe)

But recently, something shifted. Not in my head, but in my body, in my bones, in a place much deeper than thoughts.

I carry wounds from my past, like we all do, in different ways. And what I realized, not cognitively this time, but somatically, viscerally, in a way I can’t even describe, is that people who have been hurt will hurt also, themselves and/or others. Not because they want to, not because they’re bad people, but because pain, when it lives in the body long enough, finds its way out. One way or another.

I thought that by now or soon enough, with all the healing work I’ve done, and I have done the work deeply for over 12 years, I thought one day I’d be done: healed, kind, perfect.

And then over the past several months, came the realization that cracked me open.

I understood, really understood in my gut, in my chest, in my nervous system, that I have been hurting people around me. Not intentionally, not maliciously. But hurting them nonetheless, in ways that echo the pain I know myself. And that realization hit me like a wall.

The impossible equation: I don’t want to hurt others, but I do, so what’s left???

Someone who has been deeply wounded will wound others: themselves, the people they love, someone, somehow. That’s not a comfortable truth, but it’s a true one.

The grief is real: the gap between the ideal I was hoping I’d be one day and the reality of being human is painful. It’s actually a specific kind of grief that doesn’t get talked about enough: mourning the ideal self. The healed, whole, perfect version of you that you’ve been quietly working toward for years.

And now I have to accept a new picture of myself, one that includes all parts of myself.

I will always get triggered. I will never be perfectly assertive. I will hurt people, even when I don’t want to. I will always have parts of my body that frustrates me, emotions that overwhelm me, fear and sadness and anger that show up uninvited. And… I will also always be, deep down, a generous and kind person. I just don’t quite believe that last part yet.

What I’m learning, slowly and painfully, at a somatic level not just a cognitive one, is what it actually means to own all of yourself. To accept all parts, without the hope of one day becoming someone else. Part of the real work is self-regulation: learning to feel safe enough, learning not to overreact, while still allowing yourself to react. And also acceptance, learning to be realistic instead of holding onto a fantasy that was never possible to begin with.

This is what some might call disillusionment. But not the shallow kind. This is deep, embodied disillusionment, a knowing that has moved from my head all the way down into my body, my energy, my DNA. It’s painful. And it’s also, I’m beginning to think, exactly the work that needs to happen. It’s what we call integration in psychology.

There’s a name for what I carry: C-PTSD. The C stands for Complex, Chronic, and/or Childhood. Perhaps all three at once. I first heard it described as Chronic, which felt really accurate for me. Childhood fits too. Complex is the clinical term, but for me, it’s all of those things woven together.

Here’s what I’m sitting with now, and what I want to leave you with:

Maybe closing that gap, between who we hoped we’d be and who we actually are, IS the healing. Not becoming perfect. Not finally being done. But grieving the fantasy of perfection, and learning to be at peace with reality instead.

It doesn’t feel like healing when you’re in it. It feels like loss. Like collapse. Like standing in the rubble of something you built your hope on.

I wonder if that’s what people mean when they say “healing is possible.” Not that you’ll become who you dreamed of, but that you’ll stop suffering so much over the distance between that dream and the truth.

The gap closes. And maybe, slowly, so does the pain.

I’m not there yet. But I think I’m on my way 💛.

And here is what came up when I reverse engineered what I’ve been experiencing, in case you’re been experiencing something similar in your life before:

• disillusionment, identity grief or grief of the self, moral injury, existential reckoning, radical acceptance, embodied knowing or somatic knowing, Gnosis, integration, paradigm shift, Kensho.

Lots of those terms seem similar, they’re just used interchangeably depending on the context and culture. Apparently it’s a profound spiritual and psychological event. Rare. Uncomfortable. And real.

🌱 If you’re struggling with your mental and emotional health, you’re not alone. I’m offering counselling sessions as an RTCc, and I’d be honoured to support you on your path. Reach out anytime 🙂 Contact me

How to support my article: Like it ❤️ / Comment 🗣️ / Restack it! 🔄