I asked my close friend to read my last post Shame & Blame (Capitalism & Neoliberalism), which I realized was a bit disjointed. (I wanted to make connections between things I had read and my thoughts, but quotes, and quotes within quotes, and my changing narrative voice, it does seem all over the place and difficult to digest looking at it)
Through the back and forth with my friend, led me to acknowledge that the shame and blame derives not just from the influences of capitalism and neoliberalism, but also messaging I learned and internalized from my family. (And people who’ve abused me in workplace, but that’s another post.)
I’ve worked very hard to fill my life with loving supporting voices to drown out the negatives ones that I still carry with me. I like this School of Life Video, Overcoming Bad Inner Voices, because it helped me realize I don’t need to shame myself for my inability to “just ignore” and “let go of” the bad voices. Instead, coping involves recognizing the need to instead fill my life with positive voices (and needing that is not “neediness'”).
When I hear those bad voices, telling me I am bad person for not showering love and kindness to someone who has never showed me an ounce of affection (or done worse), a bad person for manipulating my illness to win argument or to take a time-out, or to trump my needs ahead of being considerate of others (or suggesting I’m self-harming to unjustly punish others and delegitimize their point of view), a bad person for losing or misplacing a simple object, which reaffirms that I am a careless inattentive immature person, a bad person for unfairly holding grudges or completely inventing stories about someone’s repeated hurtful behavior, or a bad person for being upset or angry when people disappoint me because I fail to understand the world doesn’t owe me anything and this is just life — but at the same time view any simple mishap their own life or others as disastrous and unjust (I could go on…) – when I hear those bad voices, I spiral in a quicksand of shame/guilt/powerlessness.
So I listen to Kanye West as my new voice. More specifically, Kanye West impersonating his deceased mother singing to him from heaven. From the song “Only One.”
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Oh, the good outweighs the bad even on your worst day
Remember how I’d say
Hey hey one day, you’ll be the man you always knew you could be
And if you knew how proud I was
You’d never shed a tear, have a fear, no you wouldn’t do that
YOU’RE NOT PERFECT BUT YOU’RE NOT YOUR MISTAKES.
THE GOOD OUTWEIGHS THE BAD EVEN ON YOUR WORST DAY
I repeat these phrases to myself and I cry alone in my room. I sob and I sob and I sob because I’ve so desperately needed someone to remind me of that in all my hardest moments.
On my hardest days, I still contemplate suicide. I am not sure I will ever stop. I feel certain it will come to that at some point. I can’t help still believing that.
A friend asked me the other day, if I honestly think there is anything that a person can do that will stop me. I don’t know how to answer that question. It’s not one thing that happens on one day that saves the day and saves me. But the antidote to all the blaming and shaming I do to myself, has to come at least partially from outside myself.
Inside My Madness 