When Will I be Perfect??

My mom bought me two anger-management books on express shipping this weekend.

Let's just get it out there: I have issues. I have weight issues I have anger issues I have emotional issues. I have OCD I have depression I have Hashimotos Thyroiditis (boys don't come knocking down my door all at once). Obviously, I did not have to clean up this giant heap of shit with one shovel. No no, I have taken it one poop bag at a time, and for months I thought that I'd finally reached a state of personal serenity...until this weekend.

This weekend, a demon that has literally been the bane of my very existence since I first came into existence, woke up from its usual several-month hibernation. For the sake of anonymity and per my own emotional needs, I'm going to keep the details of the weekend to a minimum--but it's not the details that are important.

My parents tell me that when I was an infant, I was a dream of a baby. I ate and then I slept (and repeat) on a peaceful cycle for weeks on end, and then on one re-occuring fateful night of my apparent choosing, I would let it all go. They had no idea what caused it and to be frank, how to stop it, so they would let the tantrum play itself out until I naturally resumed my tranquil routine. As I've aged, my anger has followed that dormant-but-bubbling-and-brewing-and-the-tension-is-building-so-be-prepared-for-an-eruption time schedule and it has caused me problems in my personal relationships on more than one account.

So yesterday, after I ugly-cried for a strong hour and a half about yet another relationship that was in jeopardy because of my tiny volcano, I thought to myself "When will I finally get there? I've been diligently fighting my battles and building myself for my entire adolescent life, yet it seems like another one always surfaces when I dare to believe I'm getting somewhere. When will I be perfect?"

And that's when I realized it.

Until that moment, I had envisioned this one ideal person that I was going to be one day. She was who I was working so hard for. Once I was her everything would be okay.

But I was so focused on her that I forgot about myself. I forgot to remember all of the times that I was already her.

We are all so myopically hard-wired to want become our "best selves" that we don't pause to look back on how far we've already come.

Anger is my vice. It has been since birth, and it is the thing that I will have to work hardest to tame in this life.

And here is the proverbial BUT:

But,

There will always be something to work on--that is literally what the term "we're only human" translates to. I am already my best self, I have been since birth.

I only need to learn how to check myself when that best self slips up.