Ain’t That A Shame?

“I will die without anyone knowing.”

Around the age of 13, this idea began to form in my mind. I had the literal fear of God put in me that being gay was one of the worst possible sins. On top of knowing there was something wrong with me, I knew that I couldn’t tell anyone about it. 

I imagined going through life, getting married to a woman, having kids, and taking my unmentionable secret to the grave.

Do you understand how heavy it is to have a secret of that magnitude at that age? My heart bleeds for my younger self when I think of it. It’s far too heavy a burden for a teenager to carry. 

At the time, I didn’t have the language to talk about or understand shame, but that’s what I was: ashamed. But there was another word that I was taught about quite well: pride. 

People take pleasure in putting down people they think need to be put in their place. Pride comes before the fall. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. There’s a reason Americans are obsessed with watching celebrities fall from grace.
(Sorry, Britney.)

I think it’s the same reason the anti-gay movement is so against Pride celebrations. They can’t stand to see people unashamedly love themselves and harness that power. It’s an intimidating and powerful thing. From an uninformed perspective, Pride can look like a self-aggrandizing pat on the back. But from inside a marginalized community? It is planting a flag in the ground saying, “We’re here. We’re queer. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

Pride is all about liberation. Casting off the shame that has been piled on. 

I’ve learned through therapy and real-life experience that harboring shame has a long-lasting impact. 

My shame thrived off of my ability to hide parts of myself from the world. 

It’s like I’ve separated myself into two people and it’s killing me to keep all my bad parts hidden. -August 28, 2013

That journal entry from 2013 illustrates me hitting my breaking point. Sectioning off parts of myself was an illusion. 

We are integrated beings. We cannot be carved up and fenced off like farmland. 

We’re more like an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Sure, the kid only peed on one end of the pool but inevitably it’s going to spread. 

We are not able to cut out areas of our lives that are uncomfortable or negatively perceived. Eventually, what you hide will come to light. And the longer you wait to face the hidden parts of yourself, the more the shame grows. Builds muscle. Entwines itself more deeply.

I’m still working through how to authentically show up in my relationships without putting on a mask of what I think the other person will like. It’s intimidating to be yourself. It puts you in a vulnerable position because someone seeing the real you and rejecting you—that’s the worst nightmare. A confirmation of your unlovability. 

I lost confidence in myself as I got my first inkling that I was a little bit different than other guys. At the best of times, puberty is messy. At a time in your life when you’re already vulnerable—your body changes, your social life takes on complexity, your reliance on your parents decreases—the last thing you need to be told is that there is something inherently wrong with you. 

Shame did not originate on its own. I didn’t pick up the burden willingly. Shame was thrust upon me. 

The problem is that people often do this without knowing the damage they’re inflicting. My dad didn’t allow us to have The Ellen Show on in the house. He never explicitly said, “I don’t like gay people and they’re bad.” But I sure knew how he felt about having them in his house. My mom never said, “I think you’re disgusting.” But when we watched Downton Abbey and two men kissed, she said that it “made her ill.” 

(I knew that my parents loved me. I knew they wouldn’t have said these things if they knew it’d hurt me, but it did not change the fact that I was convinced they would be repulsed and disappointed if I told them I was attracted to guys.) 

Most people take care not to express these kinds of opinions when the object of their disdain in the room. But closeted gay kids get a front-row seat to the spectacle. I was able to hear what people truly thought about me. 

Guys knowingly and unknowingly conduct a kind of self-reinforcing, policing of masculinity that plagues many, if not most, of their interactions. All things are monitored and analyzed on a scale of masculine to feminine and if a word, a gesture, or an interest slides too far toward feminine it must be labeled as gay. 

Stare at a guy for a second too long, fag. Embarrassed to undress in the locker room, gay. Don’t want to talk about how much Jared wants to bang Keelie, homo. But if I slap you on the ass, no homo. Obviously.

Being gay became the ultimate insult. This is a problem that affects straight and gay men alike. But while straight men have to defend their masculinity and straightness, gay men actually are the insult that’s being levied at straight men.

Gay men are considered the lowest of the low. The policing of masculinity constantly reinforces this idea and gay people hide from this, internalize it, or many, like myself, do both!

None of this held a candle to what I heard at church. I went to school to learn how the world worked, but I went to church to learn how to live life right.

Thankfully homosexuality wasn’t an often discussed topic. But when it was brought up I wanted to sink through the floor. The words used to describe gay people denigrated them, while rousing anger and indignation in the congregation. 

Unnatural. Immoral. Deceived. Abomination. Sinful. 

It’s not just about the words said, but also the tone in which they were said. What felt like righteous anger to them came across as pure hatred to me. Gay people were talked about as if there was not a single gay person in the room. It was very clear to me that there was an “us” inside the church and a “them” that lived outside of our community.

In our culture at large, a gay guy is weak, emotional, and degenerate. These ideas are propagated and sustained at dinner tables, in locker rooms, and from church pulpits. This alliance of disgust and hate shapes the way society sees people like me. 

In turn, I started to believe what they said. Each one of these interactions added up to the sum of how I imagined people, even my family, would see me. 

Each comment, every joke, any hate that easily rolled off the tongue—I cataloged all of it. I constantly revised my mental list that categorized people into safe, not safe, or unknown. For a long time, there was no one safe enough. 

Brene Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” 

If I could sit down with my confused, underwear-aisle-loving, younger self, the most important thing I would get through his head is that he is good. 

No matter his sexuality, grade point average, or the list of sins the church hands him, at his core he is good. My lack of belief in my goodness made it difficult to open up to anyone. There is risk involved in exposing shame.

When I finally built up the courage to talk to someone about my sexuality, it felt like exposing a festering wound. The stench may kill you, but I hope you can still look me in the eyes. Will you love me even though I’m gross? Will you love me even though I know it’s not easy? 

As I hyped myself up to speak with people, I tried to cling to what I knew to be true. 

They love me. It’ll be okay. Just do it. They love me. I can do it. I’m going to do it.

But behind that mantra was another that ran much deeper and spoke with authority. 

You’re going to lose them. You think they love you. They love the idea of you. They won’t love the real you.  

Ridding myself of shame, ripping out the negative self-talk has felt like peeling an onion. I get rid of one layer, tears streaming down my face, and there’s another layer waiting for me. 

If you didn’t know (I didn’t. I had to Google it.), the outside layer of an onion is called a tunic. I peeled off my tunic of shame when I first came out to a few of my closest friends and family. 

I felt euphoric. The burden of shame momentarily lifted. But when I looked down, underneath the tunic was another layer. It felt like I’d taken three steps back. 

I caught myself regretting that I’d opened up to people. I wanted to put my tunic back on. Without your tunic, you feel raw. You’ve exposed your shame and becoming known can feel both freeing and invasive, especially if you’ve concealed a part of yourself for a long time.

Shame can not be taken away simply by revealing its source. Opening up can be a freeing experience, but there’s a second act that must take place to begin to tear down the shame that you’ve built around yourself. 

You must be accepted. Not in spite of the source of your shame, but an all-encompassing acceptance. One that surpasses the need to fix or change. 

We know hunger when we feel it in our bodies. We know love when we are shown it. 

Of course, not all of this shame-defeating work is external. You must accept yourself. Warts, scars, imperfections, and all. You do not need to change to be loved. You deserve to be loved as you are. Right now. 

I used to think that self-love was a hokey topic. It was something people talked about all the time, but I was convinced that it was nothing but fluff and filler meant to make people feel good. 

As with many things in life, we exist on a spectrum. People operate on a sliding scale with narcissism on one end and shame on the other. I had fully tilted the scales. Any amount of self-acceptance felt prideful, selfish, or lazy. 

There wasn’t a magic pill or mantra that suddenly caused me to love myself. It has taken a lot of work to move my scale to a healthier, more balanced position. And it’s not come from only one area of my life. I’ve put in the time learning through reading literature that helped me understand how my brain worked. I put in time reading people’s stories of overcoming shame. I put in time on my therapist’s couch, pouring out my pain and working through my mess of emotions. I put in time building relationships that affirmed me as good with people who loved me as I was. 

Shame is bred in isolation. You must risk the rejection that’s necessary to allow people to know you. You owe it to yourself to find your people. The people that understand and accept every part of you. 

It seems impossible to imagine in the beginning, but there are people out there who will love you for you. No strings attached. No groveling necessary.

If self-love is the soil you grow out of, the people you surround yourself with are the fertilizer that nourishes and accelerates your progress. 

You will find a place to belong. It just may not be where you were originally planted.