shameless

I was shameless as a child, even into my teens, deep into my adulthood.  Literally.  I had no concept of shame.  It was as impossible for me to understand shame as it would be for a fish to comprehend water.  Shame surrounded my environment. 

Anyone who knows my sister well should not be surprised to hear that I am absolutely sure she was massively abused in her early childhood, before I came on the scene.  She never, in my experience of her, had a sense of self.  While I felt X'd & UN'd by my family,  it felt like Mim felt she was X, was UN.  Nothing. Nada. Utterly unworthy.  Filled with shame.

Mom seemed filled with shame, too.  She'd let down her father, she'd let down her mother, she'd grievously let down her first daughter.  Not that she actually had, but that seemed to be how Mom felt. 

Shame filled my home.  Mim embodied shame, Mom was riddled with it, and Peter was clealy ashamed that we were his family.  I breathed in shame, breathed out shamelessness.

It's no wonder that I was numb to shame, so it never protected me the way as it's designed to do. 

There are things we don't do because they'd make us ashamed.  Not me.  

Honor your body?  Never occurred to me that there was anything worth honoring about my body. 

Complete homework assignments?  On that, I was hit with the double whammy of feeling no shame at not doing assigned work, I came from a family with a trinity of people who put primary emphasis on getting the big idea or setting the good intention & giving no value worth importance on following through to completion. 

I never developed deep lasting friendships because I never - even as a young adult - thought I had anything of value to offer.  And it didn't feel wrong - it felt natural.

It took having a really hit-bottom relationship with an utter & complete cad to wake up to, "You are worth more than this."  And once that thought hit me, I believed it.  I did not feel like I needed to scourge myself for all the wretched decisions I'd made in my life.  I did feel like I needed to hang onto the lessons they'd taught me. 

Years & years & years ago, I was talking with a very worldly friend of my mother's about regret & shame.  Responding to something I'd said, she asked if I felt any shame for decisions I'd made.  To this day, I consider that a strange question to come from Gig.  And I was surprised that she was bowled over when I answered that I felt regret about certain decisions, but never shame, because when I made them they seemed right to me.  "Then you're a hedonist!" was her shocked reply.  She confused not feeling shamed by what I did with doing anything I wanted.  Strange.

Brene talks about shame being part of our invulnerability armor  It's interesting that I didn't feel it.  Interesting that I did some truly ghastly things & made some seriously STUPID choices, but that I was ever eaten up by a sense of  shame  That's weird.  And a blessing.  Because when I finally woke up - in my mid 30s! - to how messed up my life was, I could step away from a road that was taking me to dark, nasty places & step toward a better path.  Toward what would turn out to be John & everything that is.

I did not feel shame because the feelings associated with it filled my home environment.  Mom & Mim & Peter were so engorged with shame, for some reason it rolled off of me.  Today, I feel healthy regret, feel distress at dumb decisions or unintentional hurts I've caused, feel the sharp familiar pang of guilt. But SHAME?  I saw too well, too closely, the destruction it causes to fall prey to its allurements.

My mother's & siblings' misfortune was my salvation.  That doesn't seem fair.