I told everyone my father died of a heart attack. He killed himself. I have never said that out loud until now.
— FadedInk
NaNd ago
~
SHAME
what you can't look at in yourself
// 3 voices in the void
Shame lives in the gap between who you are and who you believe you should be. It's not guilt — guilt is about what you did. Shame is about what you are, or what you've come to believe yourself to be. It speaks in absolute terms: not "I did something wrong" but "I am wrong." This is one of the hardest things to say out loud, which is exactly why it accumulates in the interior, growing louder the longer it goes unnamed.
The anonymous voices in this thread are saying the thing that shame told them never to say. No one here knows their name. The exposure is as low as it gets. For many of them, saying it here — even to a void — changed something about its weight.
If you have something shame has been keeping from you, this is where it goes.
// your voice
// the thread
I cheated on the only person who ever truly loved me. They never found out. I smile when people call me a good person.
— GhostThread
NaNd ago
I got the promotion because I took credit for my coworker's idea. She got laid off six months later. I still have her job.
— Anonymous
NaNd ago
// end of thread
// related threads