Perfect for Me.

A thought came to mind yesterday as I wondered about the withholding of truths, that perhaps it is the desire to be perfect that stops us. We don't want to say things that are upsetting or we don't want to not go along to cause waves so we refrain from our truths to look better, seem more perfect, nicer even. Yet in this 'nicer more perfect' mode, we are not feeling that inside. Inside the storms rage, the contradictions swell, and it seems like we are split in two...having to wear 'nice' while feelings and emotions as well as knowledge seem to overwhelm the inside. Just like pretending you don't have raging reaction to a bad food, where your stomach is turning, sharp pains, nausea, etc...and you continue to have a calm pleasant face. Being truthful is to vomit up all what we hold inside, getting rid of the turmoil that is infesting our insides.  And we want to do this in  pleasant non-hurtful manner, or without causing grief...which is impossible. The reasons and sources of our angst usually aren't  wonderful experiences, but rather trauma.  Speaking up about trauma will not sound or feel like chatting about the purchase of a new car.  It will hold pieces and shards of pain, hurt, betrayal, fear, anxiety, shock and horror.  It will reduce you to a shaking quacking hurt soul, and you have to explain how you feel. We unveil our wounded soul.  The same one we had to cover up in order to survive, we now take the chance  of dying in order to speak of it. And there is a dying of sorts.  The death of the survival person, the one who lived pretending the abuse didn't happen.  This survival person is who people liked, who got along, who was 'nicer' and 'kinder'....and we are afraid that the truthful person will be annihilated. In my case it happened.  My survival self (the pretending trauma didn't live in my body) was accepted and my truthful self rejected. Being rejected for being my truthful self felt like being abused a second time around, but this time aware and fully present...And this time, I didn't have the the body's natural survival mode of "Disassociation"....I wanted to feel this, to accept this, to acknowledge this, to honor this IN order to now live in reality. I wasn't willing to revert back to my childhood ways of living a life inside that was totally different from my presentation to the world.   This time, what I feel inside matches the features on my face or my actions and often times, non-actions. I no longer care if I am perfect for you, I am always perfect for me. " The First Casualty of Dysfunction is truth" Carl Huhta