How old is your shame?

I’ve been in therapy for many years. Roughly seven I believe. Mostly with the same person too. Meghann, with two N’s. I started seeing her at fourteen after I had multiple debilitating panic attacks every day for about a year beforehand. I used to be shy. She used to talk softer. I used to be tasked with trying to meditate. She used to text me twenty minute long youtube videos with some smooth voiced woman droning on and on about sitting cross legged in a forest. Staring up at golden beams of sunlight stringing through the trees. Taking deep breaths and wiggling the tension out of my toes. In the end, I gave up because it was too hard to gently guide unwanted thoughts out of my mind and focus on the river of light stretched out in front of me. 

As I’ve grown, and the more I have come to her with, the more I see the value in internalizing all these tools laid out before me. Positive self talk, the reframing, the circle breathing, the grounding, and the meds. Now, I’ve taken to writing notes in a little black notebook. I don’t check it that much. I hope to one day look back through it and internalize all those haphazard scrawlings I do just off screen of our virtual meetings. Some of my favorite ones:

- Karma does not exist, there is no one keeping score

- I cannot be a perfect creature

- Recognize and push through avoidance

Hopefully with these, I can finally picture a leaf floating down a glass-like stream in a forest covered in dew and a soft sheen of golden morning sunlight without being interrupted by the thought of cutting my labia off with scissors. 

Few sessions strike me more than one I had with her many years ago. I don’t remember the day, what time it was, or whether it was on her couch or through a screen. You see, I have a problem with guilt. Aching guilt. Guilt that has metastasized to my bone marrow. Guilt for things I haven’t even touched. Guilt for things I couldn’t control. Guilt for things I did and definitely deserve to have (technically I’m not supposed to say that I guess). It’s the oranges I have that have turned brown and green with decay in the fridge because I refuse to waste. It’s wondering if my indoor cat is truly happy. I sit there every other week and let my mouth water from the bile burning my lower esophagus and spew spew spew this heaviness until my heart is some semblance of content. The problem is this load is sacred to me. It’s intimate. Hearing it out loud is desecration. I will right wrongs only I still care for. I have to jam mental fingers down my throat and force it out like the morning after a belly full of vodka and wine. 

This particular time I had come to her with even more spit up. She reminded me of one of the tools in my allegorical tool box. I picture I’m driving a bus. I have several regular passengers: anxiety, depression, and guilt. They get on and off the bus frequently. They often stay longer than their stop. But I don’t have to resign and hand over the wheel. I can keep the vehicle moving. I can let them come and go. No elbow throwing or name calling. No forcing them off. Just passengers I’m not too fond of, but don’t have to derail the whole ride. We both sat with that, and then she went quiet, staring at the floor. The air became thick with anticipation in the short seconds she paused. In a steady and gently forceful voice she said:

How old is your shame?

I haven’t ever been that taken aback since. The words felt like a brisk wind that stole a sharp inhale from me. “I dunno,” I said. “Probably somewhere around my early teens.” That would make sense for anyone I presume. Those who have recent memory of the arduous experience of adolescence would probably resonate with that. At that point, I was entering the latter half of it. I had gotten through a good chunk of the stretching, bleeding, and swelling. I was around 16 or 17. I still had more to go. We soon moved on to something else I can’t remember, but we didn’t revisit it for the rest of the meeting. I don’t think it fully clicked until much later.

Living your formative years so deeply lodged in your own mind is like looking back at your memories with a broken kaleidoscope. The shiny beads and sparkles are obscured by cracks and shards of glass. I presume this could be the opposite of rose colored glasses. It’s sticking your tongue out at your mom and receiving admonishment for it, and then taking those words with you as a lump in your throat. With every new eyeroll, forgotten sheet of homework, and raising of your voice it snowballs. It grows bigger and harder in your throat until you could asphyxiate on it. You carry this into everything. Even the mundane. You don’t know life without. 

I try to picture shame every now and then. Too rooted in groveling to be something from some sort of divine and too personal to be a separate entity. Instead I see It as a trailing apparition of myself. Like “Joi” in Blade Runner: 2049 trying to be real enough to have sex with “K”. Syncing her movements to the prostitute she hired. A hollow phantom slightly delayed from the movements of Its source. It mostly follows just short of my exact movements, but more often than not we harmonize. It’s stuffed. Full. Overgorges itself almost daily. It has yellowing in the eyes, teeth, and skin; overindulged and intoxicated on self worth. It sits in the front of the bus, shrieking. With age and wisdom I’ve learned to keep my eyes on the road. I can watch the yellow dashed line turn into double solid lines. I can mull over the carbon emissions of diesel. I can make that my leaf on a mountain stream. 

It’s the kind of spectacle you don’t turn back to look at, like the man on the street, clearly out of his mind, mumbling to himself. A single glance, a wince, and you keep your eyes forward. I don’t have to hear the fact that It wants me to remember the very public panic attack I had during Nutcracker rehearsals where I loudly cried in the earshot of everyone to my dance teacher because I felt like my chest was collapsing. I can watch one lazily painted yellow stripe follow the other. Another jeer about how I used to play house with my neighborhood friends and they would make me the dog and simply lock me in the closet because I would be annoying otherwise. I can recognize the little bits of asphalt that glint in the sun. Often It gets tired and goes to sit in the back. It never leaves and continues to whisper. The leaf has since tipped over and capsized, gently being tumbled over smooth rocks. My mind’s eye is clouded by disturbed silt. The road turns to gravel. 

At 21 I have to clear up the smallest thing. I have to ask if someone was satisfied with the way I responded in anger. At 20 I apologized for explaining my side of the story. I wasn’t the perfect roommate in a time of extreme strife. At 19 on my birthday I realized that my parents had been on a pedestal, and that they had been brutally knocked off on the same day. At 18 I wasn’t taught how to be a stage manager. A lot of people liked to comment on it. At 17 I chose obsession over love. Out of 2 exes, a truly caring partner or a judgy boyfriend, I chose the latter. This someone kept hurting me and then crawling back with an apology. I guess I liked the sweaty palms he gave me. I learned that no matter how much someone says they love you, they could still not like you. When both came to me with inquiries to get back together, I chose the latter and broke the partner’s heart. At 16 I fell in love with said judgy boyfriend. I put myself under a microscope. Even if I was staring at myself in the mirror post shower, I would ask myself if the hair on my nipples would need to be removed. At 15 I was still figuring out what it was like to be attracted to girls. I was hot and cold with a girl who liked me. I broke up with her after a text she sent about baking Christmas cookies with me. At 14 I was in my highschool’s dance academy and I was the worst. I stood in the back of the class. 

At 13 I had my first panic attack. I was physically debilitated. I lost feeling in my arms and legs in the middle of Amsterdam. It wasn’t made much better by my parents fighting over my limp body sprawled out on a Dutch sidewalk. At 12 I used to look at my arms as I did grand allegro across the floor in ballet. The fat seemed to congeal more at my shoulders than it did for everyone else. I used to stand at the barre and apply all my strength to the palm of my hand and flatten the curves of my thighs. At 11 I used to eat too many carbs. I was always made aware of this by my mother. At 10 I accidentally left a friend behind at another disaster birthday party. At 9 I was over at that family friend’s house while he had some friends over. I knew them well, so I decided to try and crack jokes while they played Call of Duty. They weren’t funny to boys two years older than me. I shut up for the rest of the night. At 8 I talked while my teacher was demonstrating long division on the white board. She made me go pull a yellow strip. In a sea of green I was the only bright blemish. At 7 I copied a story I admired that my friend down the street wrote. I showed it to our other friends like it was my own. She rightfully called me out. She didn’t show me her stuff anymore. At 6 I was running alongside that family friend while he was on a scooter in the driveway. I accidentally knocked him down. I didn’t know what to do so I ran inside without helping him. He came back in with puffy eyes. At 5 I used to whisper while I played with my dolls in the game room if my mom was there. I had a little radio in my room I used to turn up loudly just in case anyone walked by my door. 

I have no memory of the earlier ages, but I see pictures of my toddler and infant face twisted into embarrassment. I think my shame came out of the womb with me. It was born from the first breath used to shriek out my first cry. Maybe It was stuffed in when my soul was moulded from the clay. It has grown with me, swelling and bleeding alongside me. The moment I first pictured that bus, It was there to greet me before anything else.