A World That Was Never Meant for Me

In a perfect world, my story would have never needed to exist.

My mother would have grown up in a home where tenderness wasn’t rare. She wouldn’t have learned to turn herself invisible just to stay safe. She wouldn’t have confused silence with peace or obedience with love. She wouldn’t have fallen for the first man who made her feel noticed, even if the attention came wrapped in warning signs she had never been taught to read.

My father would have grown up in a place where boys were allowed to be soft. Where crying didn’t make you weak, and anger wasn’t the only language a man was expected to speak. He wouldn’t have been told to “toughen up” every time life overwhelmed him. Maybe then he would have learned to stay instead of running at the first sign of trouble. Maybe he would have learned to choose responsibility over escape.

In that perfect world, two broken people wouldn’t have found each other in the dark. They wouldn’t have mistaken desperation for destiny. They wouldn’t have created a child before they ever learned how to love themselves.

But the world is not perfect.

And so, here I am.

My mother told me I was her blessing, but blessings don’t grow up afraid of footsteps in the hallway. Blessings don’t become experts at reading moods before they learn to read books. Blessings don’t hide behind closed doors to avoid becoming someone’s target.

A perfect child would have smiled at the right moments, kept quiet at the right times, and taken up the smallest space possible. She would have followed rules she never understood. She wouldn’t have cried too loudly or asked for too much. She would have glided through the world like she was made of something light and flawless.

I was not that child.

I was clumsy and loud. Sensitive in all the ways they disliked. My emotions were “too much,” my questions were “annoying,” and my existence always seemed to take up more room than they wanted to give.

I trusted too easily. I mistook attention for affection because the affection I needed never came freely. I accepted bare minimums with open hands because I didn’t know there was anything better.

People gave me different versions of “perfect,” and I tried to wear each one.

One boy said I was perfect if I didn’t question him.

Another said I’d be perfect if I acted like I needed nothing.

Another said I was perfect only until someone “better” came along.

Piece by piece, I carved myself into shapes that didn’t belong to me. I shrank when they wanted smallness. I disappeared when they wanted space. I tried to be everything except myself, because being myself never felt like enough.

I didn’t know that chasing perfection was just another way of losing who I was.

For years, I walked through a fog that felt endless. Nights stretched long. Mornings felt heavy. Every mistake felt like proof that I would never be the person the world told me I had to be.

Then something unexpected happened.

Someone reached out to me.

She didn’t ask me to fix myself first. She didn’t ask me to pretend. She didn’t tell me to hide the shaky parts or the messy parts. She held my pain without flinching. She held me without conditions. She showed me that love didn’t have to be earned by breaking myself first.

With her, the world didn’t magically turn perfect.

But it stopped feeling impossible.

We walked out of the darkness in uneven steps. Some days I slipped backward. Some days I moved forward. And slowly, the ground under my feet stopped shaking. Slowly, I learned that survival didn’t make me weak. It made me human.

One day, I looked back and realized something simple but powerful:

I wasn’t in the same place anymore.

The perfect world I used to imagine never existed. It was only a dream built on pain and longing. But the world I have now, imperfect as it is, feels real. It feels honest. It feels mine.

I was born in an imperfect world. I grew through hurt, confusion, and struggles I never asked for. But imperfection has its own kind of strength. Its own kind of beauty. Its own way of shaping a person into something resilient.

And because of that, I exist.

Not perfect.

Not flawless.

Just real.

And finally, that is enough.