Shame was a consistent companion in my active addiction and it's never all that far away today if I choose to be honest with myself. It is waiting patiently to be reintroduced to me and it will always hope to once again be in my inner circle, along with anger and self-pity. Shame says I'm not good enough and never can be; it swears to me that I'll never really stop being the person I was and that everyone who says they love me now only does so with reservation because of an inescapable history.
When I was stuck in guilt and shame about how I was living and how I treated others, I was spiritually crippled and lacked the ability to see a clear way out. I would feel the weight of this shame in the center of my being; it was as if a mass of dense liquid metal was in the center of my stomach and it was as though that mass was pulling the rest of me into it like a black hole. It was a helpless and hopelessly lonely feeling.
I ran away from it, raged against it and punished myself for it. I loathed the "man" I was and in spite of passing happiness, that shame would be back 'round again just as soon as I wasn't drinking or high. It often loved to pop by for a visit when I was at my drunkest and it was in those times that I would try to crush it by crushing myself. It wore the masks of anger and despair more adeptly than I'd have believed, but it was truly shame that was coursing underneath it all.
As I began to walk towards real sobriety, my shame was front-and-center and I knew the only way I could be out from under the weight of it was to deal with it head-on. I had to look shame right in the eye and not back down. The way through it was to own it and to share about my past openly and honestly, with no expectation. I don't get to control the way that people react to my story, but I do control my willingness to be honest in sharing it. I pull no punches and I gloss over nothing.
At times, I know I probably overshare. The fact is that it catches people off guard and sometimes makes them uncomfortable- the fact that a person may be so open and candid about their failures isn't something they anticipate. We are in a world of sugar-coating speech and carefully manicured online identities- just the sort of struggle screening that can incubate shame of unparalleled breadth and power.
The fact is, I don't share for anyone else which seems admittedly counter-intuitive. I share my story so freely because every time I do, I am putting a spotlight on shame in which it cannot abide. I am no longer a slave to my shame and I refuse to kowtow to it and again become the person it would have me be. I cannot and will not go back to being that human- the version of myself that shrinks from everything instead of expanding in proportion to the challenge. I choose to live out from under the oppression of that old companion.
I've found that shame is a lie I tell myself, and I choose to be rigorously honest with me today. I hope anyone reading may be able to say the same thing, because honesty begins and ends right between your own two ears.
