Shame on me

Experience and the memories created, are rather like the pages of a book, and like most who work to heal the hurt, I have been flipping through some of those avoided chapters for a while now. Mostly, I have noticed this ‘dwelling in the past’ has been slow to yield much fruit beyond the bitter harvest of shame. In fact, for many of those pages a lifetime of denial has left the pictures as only outlines and sketchy detail. Much like a child’s colouring book. Waiting for someone to add colour and reveal the horror in its true light.

I can understand why this is so, simple protection. Some of the most painful memories have been worried at and scratched by my teenager; so much so, they look like someone spent an hour with a pencil eraser trying to rub out ink. These are memories best erased.

In time, I learned not to make any memories at all, by absenting myself to another place where only the physical sensations gave means to any reference point between the two. I could handle the physical, I was used to that by now, could handle anything they wanted to do. The problem then switched from dissociating during abuse because I couldn’t stand what was happening to me – to dissociating in my normal life because I couldn’t stand what I had become. There was no safe place for my teenager inside or out. This is the prison of shame my teenager lives in.

I started naming my shame today and as the session closed, a thought triggered a very vivid return to a past state. In the time it takes to utter a few internal sentences, the picture those words described, the cafeteria, the newsagents and magazines on electronics, the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive ticket office, (I kid you not). All those landmarks suddenly opened up to the seemingly cathedral feel of the bus station, built to accommodate double deckers, a child of thirteen needed to crane his neck to appreciate its intimidating concrete weight.

I was back in a moment so long ago. My therapist is reframing how they ‘taught me’ to enjoy their attention - to the reality of ‘grooming,’ ‘stalking,’ ‘conditioning’ and suddenly I could feel again how I felt back then. The uneasiness I feel as I move between the shops for safety, aware of the men watching me. That horrible vigilance; where you always need to be on your guard, in case one of them exposes you. Some would even sit in the same queue with my school friends and me. The fear of exposure was huge and today I got a real sense of the moment.

The coldness of the Bus Station, and feeling so small inside it, waiting for transport.  The strong body-language of sexual interest the men would exude, (No mistaking that with my super tuned empathy) – could my friends read that? Would they know what was happening? The feel of my terrified grip on the wooden seats. The pounding of my heart, the blind and heavily masked fear of being me at 13 and a half.

This is where the work is hardest, when, either through therapy – or increasingly these days, unbidden, something comes along and colours in the lines in the book, and bingo, you’re there again, in all the stark gory detail. With some considerable effect on my equilibrium. That place, that feeling I have been avoiding for so long. Back there, then, now, feeling like an abused teenager.

This work is hard and a part of me just wants to run away again, resign the whole project to the too hard basket. Unfortunately self-awareness can’t be handed back without more denial than I could ever be able to muster up now – having travelled this far. With every step I take, I seem to be unravelling everything I have come to believe about myself. I see the faulted perception of shame, I feel the hot sting of its touch, but to know I have made shame my character is truly unnerving. Yet I see it.

I can see how the false characters I have created have lead to a confusion of identity. With that insight, gone also is the denial that I truly have the measure of the full effects on my life. As a man, I have trained myself to keep control of the tears for fear of them never stopping, as a teenager I have much to cry about. The conflict between the two has been a hand grenade in my life, and I’ve been flat on my back and delirious for years in thinking I was in any meaningful control – when the opposite was the truth.

My little boy seems very unafraid of the price for doing this work, he urges me on, encourages and nurtures my efforts. It’s not his job, I know, but I am so grateful one of us has our best interest at heart. My adult, is in many ways, disabled. My adult has shaped and reshaped guilt and shame to be a highly polished and refined tool of stricture and control. Different to the intense, raw, fearful, bruised shame of my teenager. I am older, I have learned more, I can cope with exposure of my real self by excising contact with anyone who gets close; I can leave and live alone, I can recreate myself as another character. My teenager however can’t escape, and the cost of peer and parental rejection as a teenager is something to die over.

Being in his space again fills me with such sadness; this is no way for any child to be, to exist in fear and confusion – to be robbed of time without burdens to live your childhood. It is clear what I must do. As the adult, I must learn to do everything I can to keep the men away from him. He’s had enough now. I pray now for access to my strength and endurance to see me through. Now more than ever is the time to cash in the skills this shit has built in me. Shame work hurts but I have no option but to wade on in, the pain won’t get any less if I put it off. After years of denying what happened to him, my teenager has a right to be heard and have his wounds attended and my adult needs to be free to love before loneliness kills him.

Chris Davies 2008 ©