Vanishing Acts / Shame

"Oh hey, I think you forgot something" Umm. nope. Don't think so. Not me. 

..."Oh, so..." - Gestures to a big gelatinous mass of darkness 

Ahhh. that. Okay. Well fuck, yeah I guess. 

* an entirely imaginary reimagining of a conversation with my unaddressed trauma guardian about it perhaps being time I took back custody of my shit. 

Okay (fuck this shit is heavy)

Over-sharing. A phrase to shame us into keeping our mouths shut. It's what people say when something makes them feel uncomfortable (for whatever reason)

I've probably said it myself before. But, 

I guess, I'm not really sure if I agree with the concept. Not if the words come from a place that is not asking for validation, a place that could further harm the sharer - but rather hold up a mirror for other people to feel seen - but that feeling of being seen goes both ways, it's always important to remember that. 

It's true that it's easier now than ever before to share intimate things about ourselves online without it feeling like that's actually what we're doing. And it's complex. You press "post" and then someone you didn't even think about when you felt the need to do so pops up in your notifications, your dm's, you're the one who feels seen and you're not sure that you like it. 

And that wouldn't happen in "real life". You can choose who you're visible to. 

But now then. My trauma feels bigger than me. And bigger than my new and precarious boundaries.

 

Over-sharing. It's really more important that we ourselves feel truly okay with feeling heard and seen than whether other people are okay with it. I'm writing about that myself because I am not, I have sought to be invisible for most of my life. But I want my safety back. And I know I have to fight for it. 

 

I know I can't write from a truly honest place if I am always running my words by the imaginary eyes of whoever I want to appear most worthy to in my mind. If I am always wondering if it's okay for me to say what I am saying. If it makes me less worthy of love. If it makes me less good - whatever the hell "good" is anyway. 

We’re so often taught to silence ourselves when what we have to say makes other people uncomfortable. When we are called “too sensitive” “too emotional” “too dramatic” too much. 

I feel an importance in writing these things down - as always, if only for myself. But now, also in saying them in a place they can be seen. I found I had too much to spill out to fit neatly in a witty Instagram caption no matter how I tried to edit it. So I sat with it (And avoided it some more)

And it still feels messy. Saying. All. These. Words. Shame sits heavy on my chest. 

“Why do you feel the need?” Shame is such a drag. 

I read a book. Is the simple answer. Or the catalyst I suppose.

But the real one is more nuanced. But I guess I’ll stick with the simple for now. 

The book - My body keeps your secrets - Lucia Osbourne Crowley

Lucia does that truly magical thing - makes you feel seen. As someone who tries hard to be unseeable, that feeling holds a paradox. Delicious and anxiety inducing in almost equal measure. Not gonna lie, this was a hard book to face. But when I picked it up in the shop I feel like I shrugged my shoulders as if to say "well, I guess it's time". Before I read it I knew that it was going to be important. I took it on holiday. I cried on the plane - both ways. Stilted, held in tears, but it still somehow managed to make me feel free. To release the sad little bird from my chest. 

It also broke my heart and made me furious. It’s an immensely important book. 

The kind of book I want to package up and send to every woman I love. 

It's about being vulnerable. About the way shame can impact us, even- and indeed especially when we don't think it will. Or that we can somehow control it. Hold it off. Vanish it, or disappear ourselves. It's about giving a voice to all the ways we can feel broken. It's about listening. 

Silence is where all manner of things can hide. We silence ourselves and let ourselves be silenced.

So shame, I suppose the enemy of shame is the voice. And I guess that's why I'm writing this. 

An attempt to breach the silence. To reach into my own shame. 

There have been things returning to the surface of my mind lately that I had assured myself (extensively) were entirely resolved. Fixed, healed… I knew that they were not, but sometimes these are the lies we tell ourselves to survive. When someone does something awful to you, you really don’t want to stay angry, traumatised, lost forever more - further more, you’re not allowed.

So you learn to pretend. Hoping it will stick. It’s this feeling of being made to draw a line under a thing that irreversibly changed you. But also never speaking about it because that will make it real. 

And people will blame you, that's what shame tells you. You are the disease. 

Because there’s the stigma of the woman saying the words out loud to others that she had the safety of her own body stolen from her - and that she does not know how to reclaim it. 

I don’t know that it’s something someone can truly grasp unless they’ve had it happen to them. 

Bodily safety is a sacred thing. There is a voice that tells me it was my fault. 

Even now that I know it's wrong, it still exists. 

I have spent so much of my life terrified of my body. Attempting to vanish. Because to be seen felt dangerous. As simple as that. 

And that feeling echoes each time the urge to be visible or that feeling of safety creeps back in again. Last international women's day my aunt asked me - 

“what does being a woman mean to you” and I was floored at not having an answer to what I felt should be such a simple question. I think that I don’t know because I have tried so hard not to be one. 

Somehow the concept that we can be both safe and be seen feels alien to me. I don't know if I can have that.

But here we are I guess, saying  “Hey, I see you” to shame,…

Also... “Dude, can you get lost now, you’re kind of a dick”

Oh if it were that simple. but there is more work (so much work) before that can happen.

I guess I'm here for it now some 16 years later. 

Oh yes. And read the book. Especially if you don't think it's for you. 

It's for everyone. Everyone.