3/31/24

I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to be seen, ashamed to be heard, and sometimes even scared to be smelled. On a surface level, I want to denote these feelings as social anxiety, the fear of what others are thinking about me and how I come across at any given moment. I want to say that these feelings are a lack of confidence, something I can work on and rebuild. I've re-written this post about 6 times because of such a desire; to summarize it in a way that I know will be understandable, much less relatable. I can't. I don't feel embarrassed about what outfit I'm wearing, though that certainly plays a role, nor do I feel ashamed of anything in particular that I may have said. The shame I feel is innate to my being, a character in my life, the dark, gloomy cloud over my head before I take drugs my doctor got a promotion to prescribe to me. 

I can feel the shame on my skin. If someone asked me, I wouldn't be able to tell them when it started; it simply did. I will venture to say the first time I really remember feeling such kind of shame was a quick, 6-second interaction with my Dad and Sister while on a hike. The younger sibling, as younger siblings often do whether it's recognized or not, has to make up for a lot. By the time the younger sibling is born, some 4 years have already gone by that the rest of their family has gotten to experience together. In my case, I was a divorce baby. I was born, and then not a full two years later, they got divorced. I quickly became accustomed to, especially from my Sister, getting blamed for such an occurrence. And it made sense. To her, everything was normal before I came along. Then all of a sudden there's a new being in her home, and before she even got the chance to resent me for it, there was no home at all. I was expected to catch up because I didn't even get raised before life carried on, and my little baby toddler legs could barely keep pace. I got used to making up for it: with my Sister. But on this hike, this one time, I could've been anywhere from four to eight years old I can't remember, I was falling behind my Dad and Sister. I yelled "Wait up!". My Dad responded, "Catch up!". Why this hit me so hard I really can't explain. I know and knew then, he didn't mean anything by it. Its a very, very common response to "Wait up!", yet something about hearing it, explicitly stated, that I, the sweet little thang that I was, was expected to make up for the fact that my legs simply did not function as fast as theirs did, shook me to my teeny tiny core. I was so unbelievably embarrassed. Embarrassed that I had asked them to wait for me, embarrassed that I had fallen behind, embarrassed that his response hurt my feelings. I couldn't get that "Catch up!" out of my mind. Clearly. 

The best way to put it is a feeling of inadequacy toward nothing in particular. A failure at something very broad that I'm not even sure I've actually failed at. However, though I cannot note as to where or when the feeling actually found itself inside me, and seems much more likely it has lain dormant in my blood until around puberty like a certain unnamed personality malfunction disorder, I do know it wasn't until recently that I gained the perspective of myself to actually pinpoint what the feeling was. It was guilt, it was embarrassment, it was shame. 

Last semester I remember calling home to my Mom, and venting to her in similar ways I'd vent on here, about how frustrating the term had been. Classes weren't overly difficult, my schedule wasn't crazy, it was manageable, just unpleasant. I constantly had an assignment to work on, somewhere to be, something to do, and a sufficient lack of desire to do any of it. The thing I said to my Mom at the time was "I understand why crazy people peel off their skin because I feel like I have anxiety stuck under my skin"; a troubling comment to make to a parent but one I knew she of all people would understand. It was true. I felt like no matter how much I got done, how hard I worked, how much time I contributed, there was something off inside me, something telling me it wasn't enough. 

It wasn't until the past few months, maybe earlier, that I was able to verbalize what that feeling was; guilt. Last semester, I think I experienced such guilt because, though I was working on my English degree, I felt separated from Fashion. And compiled with the fact that I had recently quit my job as a result of not having enough time to balance all three, I had adequate reason to feel that stress. Then the feelings of guilt and shame manifested out of a fear of underperforming. But this raised the question: what the fuck is wrong with me now. 

To preface, every feeling, every emotion, and honestly, every word I write on this site, is a result of one singular diagnosis which I will not go into detail. What I'm trying to figure out, is how I can control it. For years, I have been discovering new things about myself as a by-product of these exact conversations; an attempt at finding a cause for the way I am. At 18 years old, my therapist told me what she believed the cause to be, to which most educated medical personnel and my mother agreed, and one mean Catholic doctor did not.  And while I believe in the power mental health and mental illness can have over a person, I refuse to take it lying down. I can both accept that this is my brain and these are my cards, while also trying to find patterns and systems that can help me not go through what I've gone through in the recent pits and valleys I've found myself in. This time around, I don't know. The easy answer feels like a short one: a man. Anytime I have to deal with the fall-in and inevitable fall-out with a man, something in me actually comes loose, but that feels as though I'm giving that part of my life too much power. I will never give a man the satisfaction of throwing me off my rocker that badly. 

A recent article I read went into detail about how color theory can apply to one's body. They showed videos of women getting color matches for hair, contacts, jewelry, glasses, clothing, and everything you could want looks-maxxed to be the best you possibly can, all with the power of color theory. And because of that article, that prospect has been on my mind quite a lot recently. How one can actually sit down with a professional and get their physical appearance analyzed, and essentially fixed, to be the "best versions" of themselves. But it also raised a significant amount of questions, especially regarding myself. Not only the typical lack-of-self-confidence type of questions one might ask themselves after reading something of that variety, i.e. what my colors are, what my best version is, etc., but rather what isn't. What colors am I wearing that don't look good on me? What about my body isn't perfect? What am I doing wrong?

So I wake up, every morning, with these questions being the first things on my mind. What am I doing wrong? How am I coming across vs what am I intending to come across as? The guilt of being someone I'm not, or even worse, being who I am and not liking it, plagues essentially every action from putting on socks to the final spritz of perfume. While I want to write a blog post about the way I feel and tie it all up with a neat ending noting it all as something I will overcome, or a lesson I need to learn to better myself, the real reason I chose to write about the chronic shame I experience is because it won't go away. For me or most other people, these feelings are things that come and go but never evaporate and only attach themselves to moments I have to get through. 

And then I woke up and it was all a dream.