The distinction...

Wednesday night, when I was getting the first half of the Shingrix vaccine, I was asked to enter my phone number.  I kept getting it wrong, and I couldn't understand why.  I tried several times before I gave up and looked at the contact information for myself that I created on my phone.  The problem was that I was mixing the first half of my new number with the second half of my old number.

I wish there were an entry on my phone for all the things that I am forgetting or getting wrong these days.  SIGH.

A couple of weeks ago, when meeting one of the elders at church, I could not get to the word cafe.  I tried and tried and tried, but it just wasn't accessible.  I then tried to describe what people do there in order to get either the elder or the usher, who was standing with us, to say the word.  After several attempts, I finally got through to them regarding the word I was trying to say.

I was exhausted.
I was embarrassed.
I was ashamed.

My therapist recently reminded me the difference between shame and guilt.  Shame is: I am bad.  Guilt is: I did bad.  That distinction is key, both in understanding the two and understanding me.

So often, folk do not understand that I fully believe and think and act and respond because I am bad, in situations where they think that I believe and think and act and respond because I did bad.

Bad.  If the honest part of me were to choose one adjective to describe myself it would be that word.  Bad daughter.  Bad employee.  Bad patient.  Because of how I was raised, it is ingrained in me, so very deeply, that I am bad and all things flow from that.

I am still struggling with the fact that I melted down with the cardiology phone nurse the Wednesday before the MRI.  I am ashamed and I am afraid.  I am ashamed because I believe I was a bad patient for melting down.  I am afraid because bad patients get fired.

A part of me knows that I was treated poorly throughout the process.  I have been told that anyone would have reacted as I did after such stressful interactions for weeks on end—months, really.  And yet I still struggle ... mightily.   I struggle and I very much dread my next appointment that is but a month away.

I wish I didn't see myself this way.  I wish I didn't know me to be bad in all that I do, including friendship.  It doesn't help that I fully believe and understand the consequence of original sin being that we are all sinners.  The spiritual weight and the familial weight combine together to nearly crush me.

I've given up, mostly, talking about shame.  It is like beating my head against a brick wall.

I did learned ever so much from Dr. Brené Brown's book on her shame research.  I believe that I have begun to develop my own resilience to shame in certain areas.  Combining that with what I know I need to hear at times, I have experienced some success in my battle against shame.  And yet there are still areas in which shame fells me.  Being a bad patient is one of them.

I often wonder what makes a good daughter, both then and now.  I wonder, but I also know I cannot go back and change anything.  Because who I am is fixed in time, in both my family's eyes and my own understanding of self, change now doesn't matter.  That ... then ... is who I am now.

As an adult, I hear the stories of the things I did wrong or the things I did that were embarrassing.  I do not hear stories of the things that I did right as a child ... or as an adult.  I do not hear words of praise or pride or encouragement.  I hear the same old, same old words that crush me anew each time they are spoken.

I started babysitting at 11, cleaning houses at 12, volunteering at 14, and working at 16.  I made straight A's and never got into any trouble.  I did my chores and then some.  I was respectful.  And I did not make life harder in our home, at least once I was a teenager.  Before that, my sister and I fought like cats and dogs for years.

I always wonder if our relationship would have been different if someone had stepped in to help us work on our relationship as children.  I know the things that my brother and sister did when they were getting high or drinking, but I believe my aggression had more to do with my life than it did with my sister.

I am deeply, deeply ashamed of how I fought with my sister.  To this day, it is a thought that I can barely touch without descending into darkness, trembling in disgust and fear.  None of my friends now could even begin to fathom the whirlwind of anger, destruction, and harm I could become.

It stopped.  I do not remember when or how.  But I stopped fighting with my sister.  I stopped raging against her, stopped hurting her.  However, I was not kind to her at times.  For example, she loved to have her hair braided.  Since she got up before I did and left before I needed to leave, I would charge her to braid her hair.  Now, if she asked, I would do it without thought.  Really, if anyone else asked I would.  But then I made her pay.  And that knowledge of myself does not sit well with me.

Even with that knowledge, I know that I was not a terrible child.  But I was never a good daughter.  And I think about What Ifs quite a bit.   What my life would be like now if I had ever figured out how to be a good daughter then.  SIGH.

Anyway, that distinction arose in therapy last time and I was not all that successful at explaining that part of my world view.  If it comes up again,  I will engage on the matter.  However, that beating of my head against the  brick wall is getting old.  And I am growing weary.