Working on it.

Specifically, working on reminding myself that I am a pretty great person and people are happy to see me when I am around.

What brought this to mind was a recent (as in five min ago) incident where I was headed to my room as Joe was headed out the door to go to work and he told me to have a good day and I smiled and said “You too!”.

A simple, warm, everyday exchange. And it made me feel good.

For a couple of heartbeats. Then it was like a bucket of icewater was dumped over my soul and I felt a wave of depression and shame.

And what the fuck is THAT about?

Like, seriously. Where did that bucket of icewater come from? Certainly nothing external had happened to justify it. All that had occurred was that I’d had a pleasant experience where the warmth in Joe’s voice made it clear he was fond of me.

But apparently that triggered my depression’s defense mechanisms and it had to squash that warm happy feeling ASAP.

This is a new wrinkle for me. i have never caught the sheer core madness of my depression in action like that.

It is a stark thing indeed to watch one’s madness in the act of making you miserable.

The sadness component could at least be waved off as being sad that the pleasant experience was over. There’s a lot more to it than that, in all likelihood, but still.

But why the guilt and shame? About what? Over what?

As near as I can tell, I was basically feeling guilt and shame over inflicting my toxic self on such a nice person as Joe.

Or at least that was the paper-thin excuse my depression needed to douse my soul with a liquid nitrogen fire extinguisher.

Clearly that shit has to stop. I should at least be able to enjoy the nice things that happen to me. I am getting quite the glimpse of how the artificial chill of my inner environment is maintained and it is freaky.

But why does this happen? It’s easy to say that it’s my depression protecting itself, but that is a glib and not very insightful answer.

It’s kind of like my mind is protecting the integrity of its contents in the worst possible way. Happy inputs are inconsistent with all the darkness and negativity inside me and so my mind follows its basic cognitive programming and rejects the much smaller conflicting input in favor of the larger harmonious body of information in my brain.

But I want out, god damn it. And that’s going to mean hanging on to these brief moments of happiness and warmth and defending them from the overactive fire suppression system in my head.

So fuck this depressive bullshit. I want to suck every bit of good, wholesome, positive emotion I can get out of this life. I want happy positive vibes to suffuse me so they can melt my frozen heart and finally get to come home again.

For the first time.

Let me feel their love. Amen.

More after the break.

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My shame has appeal

Get it? A peel? Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Stooge-isms aside, above the line I dealt with the shame and how lame it is, but not where it comes from or how to solve it.

So let’s take a crack at it.

First off, we have already fully established in these pages that my sense of shame started the day I was born because I was an unplanned and unwanted child and so I was “another mouth to feed” to a set of parents who were already struggling to keep up with and feed the three they had.

Not my fault, obviously. I didn’t ask to be an accident. I didn’t decide to come whether I was wanted or not. I would not have chosen to barge into their lives.

But there I was, unwanted and resented.

Luckily, I was hella cute. And charming. In those glorious early days, I effortlessly charmed the adults I encountered by being adorably redheaded and freckled (which wore off eventually) and amusingly precocious in pretty much the same way the cute kid on a sitcom is precocious.

Probably not a coincidence.

So I got plenty of attention as a little one. I effortlessly became the center of attention when it suited me and lapsed into thoughtful silence when it didn’t. As now, I could be quiet and introverted or the life of the party depending on mood.

And of course, I was crazy smart. Like, bury the needle. I was reading one or two months before my 3rd birthday. I watched science shows for adults before first grade, and understood it all. I talked like a tiny adult.

Amazing and weird as fuck at the same time. Story of my life.

Hello, I’m a friendly alien.

So thank goodness, the shame did not get me immediately. I had the usual youngest kid angst about birth order injustice and people not taking me seriously and all the usual frustrations of that age, but all in all, it wasn’t that bad.

Until 1977 came around, and everything went to hell.

That’s when I was raped. Shattered my little psyche and forced me to retreat deep into my own mind so hard that I am still trying to coax myself out again 43 years later.

Some of the shame comes from there, I imagine. As unjust as this is, the utter violation of child rape leaves its victims feeling permanently soiled.

Then my friends Janet from across the street and Trish from next door went to school without me. They were a year older and so went into grade 1 a year earlier than.

By the time I got there, they wanted absolutely nothing to do with me, of course.

And then it was grind of school and neglect at home. The attention at home stopped when I stopped being cute and then everyone pointedly ignored me as they had busy, important lives to lead and I had overstayed my welcome.

Reminding people I exist was discouraged on all levels.

No wonder I often feel like I don’t.

School treated me no better. Bullies beat and harassed me right in front of teachers and playground monitors and nobody so much as blinked because from their point of view, nothing worth noting was going on, and they certainly weren’t going to so much as twitch one single muscle in order to save a fat smartass weirdo like me.

Like all herd animals, they viewed status as value and therefore a low status kid is a low value kid and not worth protecting.

The fact that I was clearly smarter than them and felt no need to suck up to them didn’t help, I am sure.

So home or school, everyone treated me like I didn’t count and didn’t matter and shouldn’t even be there, and I internalized the fuck out of that shit.

I think that’s the true wellspring of my deep sense of shame, and the social anxiety that comes with it. Day after day, week after week, year after year, a steady drip of the message that I was not important to anyone anywhere and that my supposed “gifts” for me nothing but boredom in class and resentment from teachers and were therefore worse than nothing and that I was a hideous nightmarish disgusting concatenation of contaminants who was less than worthless and who should just go away and die.

Yup. That’s my shame, all right.

As to what to do about it, I don’t know.

But I know that it’s all untrue and that I have nothing to be ashamed of and I am finally started to really push back against the madness.

Sounds like a good start to me,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.