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Victimhood and shame - letting go

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Kintsugi

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I feel I am on the precipice of releasing this enormous, weighty burden.

I had really, really long hair growing up. I remember seeing my sister's long hair when I was very small and feeling envious of it, wanting to mimic it. I went beyond imitation. My hair fell halfway past my ass by the time I was 12.

Also when I was 12, a knot had developed at the base of my neck. I could not get it out. I had always taken insane care of my hair, brushed it for 30 minutes three times a day in addition to combing it out in the shower for about 10 minutes, used the best products--I was a freak about it. It felt like the only outstanding thing about my entire identity other than being a nerd.

The knot felt like a personal failure. I hid it. I hid it for about 6 weeks. It was a shameful secret. And of course it only worsened, left to become dreadlocked.

When the knot was discovered, my mother flipped her lid. Her best friend, my godmother, owned two salons, and I heard my mother telling her to shave my head because she was so angry that I had allowed this knot to form.

The next day, she took me to the salon. They cut my hair into something you'd see Peter Pan sporting. I don't know how to describe it. It hit my earlobes. It was... f*cking adorable. It looked so good. It was so cute. It was so easily managed.

I was terrified of having my hair cut. That was who I was--the girl with the impossibly long, beautifully maintained hair.

When the girl cut it, I said, "Whoa, my head feels so light." She thought I was light-headed, that I would faint from the horror of my shorn hair. But that wasn't it. I hadn't realized over the years that my hair was so, so heavy. It weighed my head down, hurt my neck to carry. I had no idea that it was burdening me until I relinquished it.

I had a similar epiphany this past weekend, Saturday night. I've had this strange feeling all summer, ever since I left my boyfriend (who I dated for the better part of 8 years). A few weeks after leaving him, I realized with sudden clarity that I had essentially been dating my mother for a third of my life. That was disturbing. And true. How frightening.

But there was something else. Something I couldn't put my finger on. It was like there was something stuck in my shoe that I couldn't find, and every time I tried to walk forward, it would cause me to ache, but I couldn't for the life of me remove it because I just didn't know what it was or where.

Sunday morning I realized what it was: shame. A thing I have carried since the earliest memories of my life. I knew I had shame--crushing, unimaginable shame. I'm pretty sure that somewhere around here I have a thread entitled "Shame in Perpetuity." And that is true of me. I feel crushed by shame all the time, all day, every day. It makes me loathe myself. It makes me feel that existing inside my own skin is unbearable.

What I did not notice was that to have shame, I had to carry it.

And carry it I was. I have been carrying it my whole life.

My having extremely long hair is not like my having pale skin or green eyes. It was a choice I made when I was extremely young, and keeping it long, letting it continue to grow, was also a choice, but I never really saw it that way. To cut it felt like a big threat, something that would fundamentally alter my identity. It was so threatening it didn't even occur to me as an option until my hair became so problematic that I was forced to part with it.

I realized Saturday night what the thorn in my shoe was, why it caused me to feel as if I were standing still even though the whole world called for me to come forward, to walk into it. It was fear. A nagging threat. It's the little voice that tells you not to do something because something bad might happen to you, even when you know as well as anyone can know that you are safe from harm. It's the same breed of fear that colored my reality when I was anorexic. The idea of feeding myself was just so threatening in this hard-to-place way. It was my mode of life; I never questioned that feeling of being threatened because I just became someone who barely ate. It felt like there was nothing to think about. That was just me. I never stopped to consider what it was I felt I would be giving up if I simply sat down, picked up a utensil, and ate like other people ate every day.

Saturday I realized I felt threatened. It was very uncomfortable and revelatory. When I awoke Sunday, I put a question to myself: What do you feel you're being asked to give up, Simon?

Shame. I feel that the Universe has asked me to give up my shame. And I didn't even know I was carrying it. I thought it was like the green of my eyes, not like the length of my hair. Having shame never felt like a choice. I have carried it for my own personal eternity.

More later. Must go to class.
 
So wonderful @Simply Simon ! :) :tup:

Sunday morning I realized what it was: shame. A thing I have carried since the earliest memories of my life. I knew I had shame--crushing, unimaginable shame. I'm pretty sure that somewhere around here I have a thread entitled "Shame in Perpetuity." And that is true of me. I feel crushed by shame all the time, all day, every day. It makes me loathe myself. It makes me feel that existing inside my own skin is unbearable.

Yes how true. And along with it worth? And /or self-hatred, disgust, sheer exhaustion?

The idea of feeding myself was just so threatening in this hard-to-place way. It was my mode of life; I never questioned that feeling of being threatened because I just became someone who barely ate. It felt like there was nothing to think about. That was just me

Yep. Me as well. Where is the right to exist?

:hug::hug::hug::hug::hug::hug: Xox
 
Okay, so once I figured out that what I was being asked to give up was shame--shame! Of all the things! It should be like being asked to give up herpes, right?--I had to figure out why the hell I felt so damn threatened by the idea of giving it up.

Well, two primary reasons, I've decided:
1) It means that holding onto it has been, on some level, a choice I've been making, even though it didn't feel like a choice
2) Like my hair, it feels enmeshed with my identity

I thought a lot about that second one. I've noticed this summer that I keep referring to myself (here, out loud, in my own internal monologue) as a survivor of CSA/rape/whatever trauma. I have never used that word. I always use "victim." Always. I've always had a special kind of distaste for the "survivor" rhetoric. It felt invalidating and glorifying in ways that made me severely uncomfortable. I have always preferred the word victim because it felt like it really captured the gravity of my past.

But here's, like, the part where I get pretty heady. I realized Saturday night that experience and history are not the same. Experience is what I'm doing right now--the feeling of phone's glass surface on my fingertips, the sound of my nails clicking, the distant bark of a dog, the unfinished wood table I'm leaning on, the very slight breath of a refreshing breeze in this hot evening weather. My history contains a multitude of moments just like this one--fleeting, most of them passing unnoticed and easily forgotten. My history also includes a lot of shitty unforgettable things that hurt me very badly and altered me in ways that saddled me with a lifetime of stress management acrobatics and require me to perpetually wear a toolbelt of coping mechanisms in case everything goes sideways for my PTSD symptoms.

BUT... I don't need to experience shame in order to validate my history.

And, actually, shame is one of those weird things that people can try to give you but which they cannot force you to carry without your participation.

No one can force me to judge myself. Only I can decide to judge myself.

And I've been doing myself an insane disservice by carrying this shame all this time. It's completely counterproductive. I hate feeling ashamed. I'm about ready to put this bitch of a burden down.

I'm not a victim. I was victimized. It's time to stop making myself a victim of my own put-downs.

I also realized that all of my relationships thus far have enabled me to continue this victim bullshit. I was using them as a means of perpetuating my own victimhood, just as I use any tiny personal failure/transgression/foible to feed my sense of shame and self-hatred.

So this is me letting go. Yes, since Sunday morning I have still felt the twinge of self-hatred and shame, but it's like being jabbed with child-safe scissors instead of a knife. It's annoying and it aches for a moment. But it doesn't hemorrhage or get infected or split me open inside the way it normally does.

I'm not a victim. I'm Simon, motherf*ckers. And I'm glad I finally figured out that this shame business is bananas.
 
I'm not a victim. I'm Simon, motherf*ckers. And I'm glad I finally figured out that this shame business is bananas.

Thank you so much for your writing today here. I so appreciate what all you said about carried shame now being a choice and it makes me view other negatives in this light now for me, so I am going to be thinking about this and decide what is a choice now. I am an adult and own my own shit as much as I know how to. I am learning about personal choices and this is really such a freeing line of thinking for me. Hi Simon.:hug:
 
I will. Revelation can be both slippery and suffusive. I'm going to try to hold on to this.

BUT... I don't need to experience shame in order to validate my history.

And, actually, shame is one of those weird things that people can try to give you but which they cannot force you to carry without your participation.

No one can force me to judge myself. Only I can decide to judge myself

This has been my biggest take-away.
 
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