Recently, I decided to go through a bunch of old home videos.
The week after I watched them, I noticed that I kept feeling this deep feeling of shame. My brain tried to find something to attach it to but there wasn’t anything relevant. It wasn’t from an external source. It wasn’t related to any events in my life currently.
It was seemingly out of nowhere but so, so familiar. I hated it, I tried to ignore it.
I realized later that it was an old and ancient part of me. An ache so deeply rooted into my soul that I can’t find a beginning for it. It made me weepy.
After watching the home videos, I kept wondering if I was a really annoying child. If I was too much.
But why? Nobody in the videos acts like I am. There’s nothing to imply that if you watch from the outside.
Watching from the inside though, I could feel it. As I watched her, I could feel that little girls shame deep down in my bones.
Do I feel ashamed of my child self? Why else would this feeling make me want to turn my back on her? Why else would I desperately want to push this so far out of my awareness?
I don’t remember feeling this deep sense of shame as a child. But I did, didn’t I?
I feel this way as an adult when I feel like I missed some sort of social cue. If I am too much or too little. It’s an inherently ingrained feeling of being on the outside looking in.
I don’t know if I’ve ever truly felt like I belonged somewhere. It always feels like I am on the outside looking in.
I mean, I feel great by myself. If I’m alone, even if I am really going through the trials and tribulations, I feel safe in my own skin. But that’s just it, isn’t it? I only feel fully safe when I am alone.
I wonder if this is why I have struggled so much to live with people. I’d bet it one hundred percent is, actually.
Even the people I have felt the most comfortable with, I couldn’t successfully live with them. It’s a pattern I have seen continuously in my life. Even when I have tried to change it, everything still somehow blows up. Despite the external events that led me to move out, I still fear it was always my fault.
I was too much or I was too little. I am ashamed of it.
I have a scar on my neck from catching a stray nail on a swing set when I was about four or five. I don’t remember it.
This little white crescent moon mark has moved its way to the underside of my jaw as I have grown. I can’t really see it.
It caught my eye tonight as I was getting ready for bed. It’s an ancient part of me, one I don’t even remember. The story of it makes me feel brave. I wonder if someone told me how brave I was when it happened.
They’re interesting, scars. When other people have them, I love them. They are fascinating. A part of the body that carries its history. If it is still here to be seen, the scars are a living testament to everything survived.
On myself, I don’t mind them. Some of them.
I hate the ones on my face. I had beautiful skin until I got pregnant and I’m assuming the hormones fucked it all up. Since I am older, it doesn’t heal as well. The marks take a long time to fade.
It’s depressing. I don’t like looking at them. Despite that, I hyper focus on them. Sometimes I barely even see my full face.
For the past nine months, I have been working on a project.
When I began, I started with a simple idea. It’s evolved into something so much bigger than I could have ever imagined.
What I want to launch first was not the original idea. But it is the fullest embodiment of what I set out to create.
As I prepare to do so, I have been thinking about a lot about scars. It unfortunately leads to me having the song ‘Scars’ by Papa Roach stuck in my head far more than I’d like.
It seems that there are scars you can fade and some you cannot. A fresh scar heals easier. An old one may never. It’s been a part of the body for too long.
But what about the scars we carry internally? The deep down ancient parts of ourselves? The ones that come up from seemingly nowhere when we hear a certain song? When we smell something that causes an entire memory, fully formed, to play out right before our eyes?
I believe those can fade, over time, they can become just a part of the story.
If we look at them when we want to look away.
If we see the full picture of ourselves, not just the old wound.
If we take the time to intentionally care for them instead of fighting against ourselves to shut them out.
If we don’t turn our back on the little girl because she might be ‘too much.’
If we learn to love them.
