Shame

Can i see the beauty in shame? Can i appreciate the completeness with which i’ve been caught, the depth to which i’ve been plunged in my own unconsciousness? Even now i can feel it’s crippling touch on my fingers as i type, a sinking feeling deep within of defeat before the struggle has even begun.

I see now that i put shame on with my clothes in the morning (or is it even earlier than that, waiting eagerly to be with me as my eyes first flicker open?), and have lived with it every waking moment as long as i can remember. I see now that i’ve lived much of the last month crushed under shames thumb, even when i’ve been in states of ecstatic bliss shame has held the door open for me to leave it’s domain, and then closed it securely behind as i return safely to the comfort of it’s shackles.

Shame is such a subtle labyrinth, fractal like in it’s depth, unafraid of my growing wisdom (with it’s whispers so often helping my understanding) because it knows the very depths of me in a way i do not. It understands my own weaknesses, strengths and desires with an intimacy no other has.

And even in writing this i abstract it, i struggle to own my shame, that shame is not out there but in here, that i own it, that it is part of me. Perhaps i fear i am my shame, that if all was stripped back that would be all that is left. It is a poison that has seeped so deeply within the idea of life without it seems a strange and unfathomable thing.

This creature with which i live knows me with an intimacy i do not, it has been walking the hidden paths of my mind and emotions and it knows it can lay me low with a single blow. It seeks to perpetuate itself, and i feel like the more i grow, the higher in my consciousness i think i’m getting, the greater it’s eventual harvest.

My shame is truly magnificent in it’s subtlety and tenacity, in the intimacy with which it knows me, in the ease with which it controls me to create more of itself. If i wasn’t so ashamed, i’d call it beautiful.