The Sickest Burn, My Enduring Shame, and A Confession

Welp,

I told you I was doing a Monday and Friday schedule for my writing, but I was too excited today and I’m releasing my “Friday” posting early. Hope it connects…

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There are levels to shame. Here is my very simple way of breaking it down…

Low-level Shame: You’re at a drive-thru and the person at the window hands you the bag and they say, “Enjoy!” and before you drive away you reply with “You too!”. Immediately you want to eat the tacos you just ordered and then drive off a cliff, but you don’t because the tacos are so good that you want to experience them again in the near future.

High-level Shame: We’re all familiar with this level, sadly. It’s often related to our bodies, what we or others have done to them or what they communicate. It’s also psychological and mental, traumas and beliefs created for us or about others. It can be a moment or collections of moments that alter how we see ourselves. It can be spiritual, religious, political, societal, personal in nature. This level is obviously intense and heavy and I’m not here to elaborate on it today (Phew!).

Instead, I want to talk about what I’ll define as Middle-Level Shame. This often derives from moments that are harder to articulate, difficult to label and yet they stick in the backs of our minds for whatever reason. This level of shame is also a little weird to talk about. We can easily laugh and tell others about the low-level shame. We also know that for however hard it can be to reveal our highest levels of shame, it’s vital that we speak them to someone at sometime.

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What again is this middle-level shame? I’ll provide an example from my past:

I’m sixteen years old and I’ve had my license for about all of three weeks. After school, two of my buddies and I decide that we need to make a Whataburger run and so we jump in my ‘91 Chevy Cavalier (Yeah, I was that cool) to get ourselves one of the finest fast food burgers ever created (I’m staring directly at you, In-N-Out). We’re getting closer to the restaurant but I need to make one last right turn heading south to get to our beloved spot. As we approach the busy intersection, I’m already getting a little anxious. This particular area is usually loaded with traffic and, again, I’m new at this. I stop at the red light and I see that there is only one car approaching from the north of the intersection in the far left lane. As a rookie driver, I stupidly assume that most other drivers know what they’re doing. I also assume that I can make this turn without any problems (Stupid on my part). I also assume the driver will stay in their lane and I can turn right and there not be any issue. Little did I know but this driver decides to move over, in the middle of the intersection and into the right lane (where I’m entering) and almost collides with my Cavalier! They slam on their breaks and honk their horn repeatedly as I peel out onto the street.

Adrenaline pumping, the car then zooms up next to us. It’s a woman, probably in her early thirties, and she begins to yell, curse (with her words and hands) and berate me for half a mile. My window is rolled up so I can’t hear anything, but I can definitely see everything going on. My impulse then is to step on the gas and get away from this situation as fast as possible. My friends, bewildered, don’t know what to do but I’m thankful that they don’t escalate with their own gestures. I find the Whataburger and pull into the parking lot a little frazzled but glad that we’re all safe. My two friends get out and are about to walk into Whataburger as I’m locking my car door, when we see the woman roaring into the lot at a high speed. She quickly pulls up next to my car and begins to scream.

“What the hell are you doing?! Do you know how to fucking drive? Did you not see me?! You should go back to driving school!”

I’m frozen. I can’t believe that she followed us here and at the same time I’m kind of amazed that she’s confronting three high schoolers. But I’m also fed up at this point, I know I made an error but she did too. The way I recall this event in my mind, I stood quiet for a minute but then I decided to yell something back in a growing fit of rage:

“Well… you should go back to hell!”

It was a stunner, let me tell you. Not only was she stricken silent, my buddies were also quiet for what seemed like an eternity. But then it was followed by a fury of their laughter. I got her, I thought. I’ll even say, that for a brief period of time, I was proud of myself. I’m not usually quick with the retort but this was a sick burn. That is, until I looked toward the backseat of her car. She moved to reverse her vehicle, having seemingly lost the verbal duel, and that is when I noticed her young son in his car seat. If I were to guess his age, he was probably five years old. I’m sure he witnessed the whole thing and while I can’t remember his expression or if he knew what was going on completely, I immediately felt shame. Shame about who I was in that moment, shame for what I said, shame for cursing at another person, shame for damning a woman and a mother.

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We carry these moments inside of us. Sometimes when I thought about the incident later, I could find humor in it and my ridiculous driving and how wild it was that this person followed a car of teenage boys. I could even find admiration, in some ways, for her courage to confront someone else, although maybe not in front of her child. But I also wondered if this moment defined something about me? If it also shaped her and her son later down the line? If he saw my rage-filled face and my friends laughing at his mother and it changed something in the trajectory of his life? Many years later and in the early months of dating the woman who would become my wife, I told her this story. I didn’t know how she would feel and while it wasn’t presented with intensity, it still came out like a confession of sorts. Who knows how she could react? But I finished and waited for her response. And she laughed. A really hard laugh, in fact I think she laughed so much that she had tears streaming down her face. To this day it is one of the hardest times she has ever laughed at me. She has the best laugh in the world, by the way. And while I still don’t fully know what she thought so funny about my retelling, I do know this. It was healing.

Again, this wasn’t high-level shame that I had been carrying around but it was high enough that it still bothered me. That laugh allowed me see things differently. It also become a bit of a joke in her family too as she relayed it to them later. They are a family full of rich, hearty laughers. These moments allowed me to let that moment go, even if just a little bit more.

Whether you are religious or not, there is something healing about confession. I’ve come a long way in my life and I’ve moved away from some old concepts, but I will always advocate that we find a friend, a therapist, a mentor, a minister, a partner, a community (Perhaps even all of those and maybe excluding some at times) to reveal more of our true selves. We are often encouraged to display curated identities on social media and even in our lived relationships, to highlight that we’re living our best lives. Instead, we need people to connect with who know us more completely in our shame, our insecurities, our doubts, our pain, our confusion, our pleasure, our joy, our love. Our confessions will be met with a variety of responses: tears, silence, warmth, embrace, smiles, and surprisingly, even laughter. These confessions don’t exonerate us but instead help shed new light and new pathways for us to live out our truest existence. To see ourselves and each other in refreshing ways. While I’m not completely cured of my guilt here, which can sometimes be a healthy remainder, I’m also a little more free than I was before. And that is something that we can give ourselves and others, no matter the level our shame resides. Confession shouldn’t allow us to be the same, it should release us to be better.