The Same Old Shame

As a response to my previous post, I am writing this without barriers. I am looking into the icy gray wind and facing the honest answers. This is what I see when I ask where the anger comes from.

She emerges from the suspended comfort of December, from the holiday-fabricated bubble that postpones making decisions and facing any difficult or otherwise soul-ripping situations. As she steps into January, ice hits her like a million grains of sand cutting her to pieces, but she stands still and strong. She knows it's time.

Yet, it is this very knowledge that wants to defeat her. It is knowing what must be done and what hasn't been done that shames her. It is knowing that she has, at times, compromised her resolve in the name of peace. It is the image of her obliging a man in the name of peace that shames her.

And every time she remembers that there are things she hasn't done, because for now it's easier to keep the peace, she feels the same old shame...and she wants to slay it...with her images...of cutting.

Afterthought:

I have been trying to answer this question for a few weeks now, and every time I sat down to write the proverbial wall went up. I found that I couldn't bring myself to look into this part of me. Finally, this morning I started to write again and decided to try to look at it in the third person. I thought maybe it would be easier to write about myself as if I were watching from the outside...it worked.

Slaying My Shame

"Loving your shame doesn't mean you love what happened to you. It means you love you."

-Terri St.Cloud

The Fabric of Her Dancing Shoes

Trigger Warning: Self-Harm

I don't fully understand the meaning of this quote, but it rang somewhere deep within me when I read it this evening. It felt like it applied to me, like I can somehow relate.

Perhaps it's because my shame has surfaced in so many ways during the last few months...and I'm so tired of seeing it, of feeling it. In fact, I've mastered the art of slaying my shame. Lately, I've been cutting it down with a virtual blade.

Every time I feel it rise and spill over like burning lava emerging from the core of my anger, I trample it with my images. I vividly visualize scenes of cutting. The painful pangs are replaced with flashing pictures of my blade...of my wrists. The more the shame, the more the pictures...the blade cutting across the skin...the red and angry cuts staring back at me, asking for more...because it's never enough.

The last time I called him from the low and lonely floor, my therapist asked me who I was so pissed off at that I felt I had to take it out on myself as such. I replied that I would have to figure it out, but he said not over Christmas.

Well, it's not Christmas anymore. January is here like the piper wanting to get paid. I have to face the bare branches now. The answers are hanging in the cold gray air...but I'm afraid to look.

10,000 Page Views!

I opened my blog today to find that I had reached the 10,000 page-view mark! How exciting for me! I remember when I started blogging just about three years ago. I was shy and afraid and sure that no one would ever read what I wrote!

I have since published 232 posts with over 1,000 comments! I want to say thank you to my readers for supporting me and encouraging me and for following my story. Thank you for your comments, which materialize your presence and have often served as a lifeline for me.

I often wonder about the quiet readers who leave no visible mark other than a notch in my stats page and little extra color on the map. I hope that if you feel my pain, you do not feel alone and that perhaps you might be walking some of my baby steps with me.

I am proud of this blog. I am proud of the work that I have done as I have written these pages. I am proud of the candid words, the flowing tears, the honesty of it all. This is my place to come clean. This is where I lay it all down.

Thank you, again, for 10,000 page views.