The One About the Wound We All Carry

Matthew Perry recounts in his book, a pivotal experience at age 14 where he drank his first bottle of wine and laid on the ground, looking at the stars and feeling a sense of peace he hadn't experienced before.

This past Saturday began simply with breakfast at one of our favorite local hidden spots. We had planned to stop by a local summer festival afterward, but as we drove past and I saw the crowd of people moving toward it, my nervous system said absolutely not. The part of me shaped by pandemic trauma, still vigilant, still on edge, whispered: Keep driving.

And so my husband and I veered off course, onto the quiet country roads, with no destination in mind. He drove while I softened into the passenger seat, the hum of the tires and the rhythm of the road cradling something inside me I didn’t know needed holding.

The sun poured like honey across the open fields. Dust floated behind us like memory. Golden crops danced in the breeze as if they knew something about surrender. The occasional cat or wild creature darted across the path, disappearing into the brush.

I stared ahead at the long stretch of road, vast and unhurried. Something about it reminded me of that final scene in The Terminator, where Sarah Connor gazes into the horizon, knowing what’s coming, but willing to meet it anyway.

All the while, Matthew Perry’s voice filled the car.

It was his audiobook, his own voice recounting his life, raw and vulnerable. There was something haunting about hearing him speak from beyond the veil. Not just because he’s gone, but because his pain is not. His pain is still here, alive, echoing in so many of us.

His passing affected me more deeply than I expected. Friends has always been a steady companion in uncertain times. During COVID, it played on repeat in the background, like a familiar heartbeat I could lean on. Even now, with the world trembling in subtle and seismic ways, it plays again. Not for the plot, but for the comfort. For the knowing.

So, It’s taken me a long time to be ready to hear his life story in his voice. But on that drive, with the sunlight on my skin and my husband beside me, I let him in.

And something clicked.

Matthew’s struggle, though wrapped in addiction, mirrored something I’ve known intimately. My addiction was never to substances. Mine has been to over-functioning. To doing. To being needed. To carrying more than my share just to feel worthy. That belief, that I must earn my rest, my worth, my place, still clings quietly to me. It often shows up as guilt when I try to be still.

But that day, sitting in a moving car, I noticed something rare: my nervous system exhaled and I took notice. The illusion of movement gave me permission to rest. To listen. To just be, without guilt biting at my heels, I mean I was still moving towards something. And as I listened to Matthew recount his life, I felt the invisible thread between us. Different lives, different wounds, same root.

He sought solace in pills and alcohol. I seek it in structure, in being “capable,” in making sure everything around me runs smoothly, even when I'm falling apart inside. His loop was addiction. Mine is achievement. His shame lived in the relapses. Mine hides behind the praise for how much I can handle.

But beneath both?

A hauntingly similar ache: Am I enough as I am? Would I still be loved if I stopped performing? If I laid it all down?

At one point in his book (by the way, I am still not finished listening to it), Matthew talks about stairs, and in his voice I feel that he really despise them. Always climbing. Always falling. And I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the perfect metaphor he wanted to convey, for the cycle we all endure. We each have our own stairs. Some of us climb endlessly toward approval. Others spiral downward into escape. But the shadow shaping it is the same: the deep, aching fear that we are unlovable in our rawest, most unfiltered form.

And yet, what’s clear to me now is that this is what we all long for: To be seen in that rawness. Not fixed. Not polished. Not coached into clarity. But witnessed. And still loved.

Matthew’s story is heartbreaking, not because he didn’t try, but because he did. Over and over. Just like so many of us do, trying to outrun our pain, or outwork it, or out numb it.

And no, so far, I don’t believe he shared the rawest parts of himself in that book. No one ever does. But he shared enough. Enough to reveal the universal ache of being human.

As we bumped along that dirt road, unpolished, timeless, honest, I saw it all clearly. Our wounds may wear different masks, but their roots drink from the same unnourished, depleted soil.

We are all trying to remember that love doesn’t have to be earned. That worthiness isn’t a performance. That rest is not a luxury, it is a birthright. That we are still lovable, even when we fall apart. Even when we’re not useful to anyone but ourselves.

I wonder: If we could see the sameness in each other’s struggles, instead of the differences…If we could create spaces for our most raw and honest selves to exist, without shame, and most importantly, without systems trying to capitalize on our pain, how many generations would it take before this wound stops repeating itself?

As we drove toward home, I felt something loosen. Not just in my body, but in my heart.

A small unraveling. A sacred pause. A quiet honoring, of Matthew, of myself, and of the shared ache that we all carry.

This is for Matthew, the only actor whose passing for me truly felt like losing family.

Dear Matthew,

I see you. Not as the character who made the world laugh, but as the man who carried a weight few understood. You tried to outrun the pain, to rewrite your story in a world that wanted your humor but didn’t always hold space for your hurt.

You were more than the addiction, more than the relapse, more than the punchlines you used to shield your heart. You were a soul aching to be seen, raw, fractured, and real.

And in the moments when you let us glimpse that truth, you gave us something even deeper than laughter, you gave us connection.

I honor the fight you fought every day. Not everyone survives the war within. But your battle was not in vain. You cracked open the silence around suffering and gave others the courage to reach for help.

Wherever you are now, may you finally know rest, free from the noise and the ache.

You mattered.

You still do.

With love,

A fellow soul who knows how heavy it can get.