Shame. I recently posted about the meaning of shame. However what I missed out on was telling about a shameful moment I had experienced. I had moved out of the state of Michigan several times. One of those times things didn’t go quite according to plan and I found myself without a roof over my head. I relocated on short notice (as always). I quit my job, called around to some areas to assess the culture, told my friends and family and I was out the door. I think I got this habit from the Marines. In the service your always moving, never getting comfortable, in the Marines comfort is not a quality condition, in fact I would say that any sense of comfort is destroyed long before it can reach you. The more discomfort you experience, the little discomfort goes away.
Example: A Marine platoon living in a tent, in the hills in constant freezing rain, eating MRE’s 2 meals a day, surviving on playing cards, dice, a pack of smokes and chew helped. Life was forcibly uncomfortable. However, when the rain stops, life gets a whole lot better, still seriously uncomfortable, but tolerable. Run out of smokes and the situation would get real uncomfortable for everyone. (can I say smokes?)
So, here I am. Homeless a 22 hour drive from Saginaw. This was shameful, but I knew I could count on my mother and father for help, I just needed to make it on my own. Back then, homelessness was different, people today make it much more dangerous.
I finally secured a place to say, but was still homeless. I moved around A LOT. I finally got a job, got a place to stay, but I had bills due and I wasn’t even making the minimum balance on my debit. I was looking at loosing the place which would entail loosing the job, or paying off the debit and then paying bills. I wasn’t being reckless with my debit, basics.
The moment of shame was going to my family for help. I was raised understanding to never buy anything other than a house with debit. My father said “if you cant afford it, its not yours”. I learned quickly not to have envy for the finer things, I understood that if I couldn’t pay cash, I don’t need it. My father would say to protect “ones name from criminal history, carry no debt, and be nice to every, and you’ll do just fine”.
So, I had to call home, and ask for help getting out of a situation that I was told to avoid. Not many rules there, only 3, and yet I had some debt! I was a grown man, (no mature) that had made my own life difficult, and now I needed to ask for a bail out. Again.
It was a quick “of course son”. I survived for a short period of time, before repeating the process. But I felt so shameful asking for help. It was a quilt I carried deep within me and I would play a record in my head over and over about failure.
I didn’t learn to fail well enough apparently. That’s a solid note there, “Fail Well” never carry shame, carry experience and forgiveness.
But it was nonsense for me to put that shame on myself. My parents probably never knew of the feelings at the time. They knew I was grateful. Gratitude and shame at the same time. Hmmm.
Peace.
