You CAN Go Home Again (A Talk on Shame)

I dated this turd of a guy in college who told me that you could tell how classy you are by how you hang the toilet paper roll in your bathroom. Now, since then this has become a wildly debated topic on the interweb. Up until that point, however, I was unaware of the importance of your toilet paper placement and what it said about you as a person. I didn’t really know how I hung my toilet paper and up until that very moment, I did not care. But none of that stopped me from paying close attention the next time I took a trip home (because we all know no one cares how you hang toilet paper in your college apartment. Mostly because it’s rarely hung). That didn’t stop me from realizing, with something akin to horror, that using the sophisticated metric of toilet paper hanging, my family was clearly not classy. Nor did it stop me from checking every toilet paper roll every time I set foot in my house, setting each one “right” so I could hide the shame of being found “unclassy.”

Did I mention he was a turd?

Now that was a long, long, long time ago. I have grown a lot and done a lot with life since then. I’ve had jobs that made me feel like something in this world. I got married to a great man and together we built a great life, filled with three crazy children, one giant dog and all the things that say “we’ve made it.” I’ve lived in five different states, traveled to other countries and expanded my boundaries and comfort zones more than this girl from a tiny town in Maryland ever imagined she would.

I’ve created and re-created myself many times over. I’ve made big mistakes and landed face down in the arena (thank you, Brene Brown) more than I care to admit. But I’ve picked myself up, created new life from ashes and built character along the way. I’ve loved the right people (and, obviously, the wrong ones) and I’ve both given and accepted forgiveness when it’s needed. I’ve lived life, y’all. Forty years of it. 

And in all of it, I’ve paid very close attention to how the toilet paper rolls hang in my bathrooms. Because this matters. Running from shame matters. 

And in all of this life, all of it, the one thing that I haven’t done well is remember my roots and honor them. The one thing I’ve struggled with and failed is remembering home. I’ve let time and distance and disapproval and money and life get in the way of connecting with where I’m from and who I’m from. I’ve let so much get in the way of visiting my family and connecting with that girl from a little town in Maryland that shame has crept in and set up walls, strongholds designed to protect my heart from the shame by keeping me at a safe distance.

Because it’s too hard.

It’s too hard when I see how much life has happened in my absence and it rips a little piece of my heart as I watch my parents age and grow older, knowing that I’m not there to hold their hands when they need it and they’re scared and feel alone. It’s too hard when I see my niece and nephews and they don’t know me and I struggle to know my brother, the kid whose shadow I grew up in, because time and distance got in the way of our adult relationship. It’s too hard when I drive down old country roads with broken down farmhouses and the distinctly sweet yet pungent smell of cow manure wafts in through the open car window and I want, more than anything, for my kids to grow up running those fields the way I did. And it’s definitely too hard when it’s time to get back on that flight and the breath catches in my lungs and I have to fight to keep going, keep breathing, keep moving as the grief of separation between my life and this life is too great for my heart to bear.

So I hide from the shame of it all.

I’ve let this shame build up over the years. I’ve felt shame that I haven’t visited enough or been present enough. I toss around words in my head like “disappointment” and “failure” because I don’t feel like a good enough daughter or sister. I watch other families connect and friends bridge the physical distance with ease and feel outplayed and outmatched because I can’t figure it out. And I feel shame and heart break and I’ve let that keep me away.

Because it’s easier to not get on that plane knowing you’ll have to turn around in a few days and feel the rip of pain as you fly away. It’s easier to pretend that I’m a sophisticated New Yorker or carefree Californian or down home Texan and ignore my honest Maryland roots. It’s easier to talk on the phone for hours to my parents and convince myself that I’m still really there for them when they need it. It’s easier to blame my brother for not visiting me and avoid strained family ties by taking on the title of “black sheep” with pride. 

That stupid shame I felt over a toilet paper roll, something so silly and inconsequential, has evolved a bit but it’s still the same. I ran around for years changing the toilet paper rolls in my house to hide my shame over what some jerk of a college kid said to me and I’m running now, years later, from the simple fact that I haven’t been there for my people.

But the thing is, I’ve become quite acquainted with shame in the last few years. We’ve become close and I’ve learned a lot about it’s operating procedures. Shame LOVES to keep you hiding. It likes to keep you running, running and running some more. Running from truth and light and, well, running from yourself. Shame, like fear, is the ultimate bully.  

And while you can let shame do it’s thing and keep you hiding and keep you running, you’ll never quite be free if you do. Hiding and running chafe against your soul. You’re not really living if you’re on the run from yourself. And while you can function hiding and running and giving shame it’s hey day, you’ll always be kind of dying inside.

So the best way to beat the living tar out of shame (which is what it deserves) is to give it to the light. It’s like a vampire and exposing it to light makes it shrivel and die. Shame cannot exist if you look it straight in the eye. Shame can’t thrive if you throw it down and examine it and stop running and stop hiding.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the only way I would be able to defeat the shame of absenteeism would be to, well, stop being absent. It would be a flight back home. It would be time spent with family, in spaces that felt native to my soul. It would be examining, truly examining, those times when shame crept in and I felt the urge to run, flee and hide as a defensive tactic against feeling regret or sadness over my absence. 

And now that I’m trying to put shame in it’s proper place, I’ve come to a few conclusions about myself.

I am and always will be a girl from Baltimore (yes, that rat infested hell hole of a place). I am proud of this. I love this about myself. And it’s first and foremost who I am, Hun.

Living connected to my roots is how my soul is meant to live. To let life circumstances, distance and disapproval get in the way of that is living out of alignment with my heart. And to that I say NEVER AGAIN.

I love my parents and my family with every ounce of my living beating heart. Every time I have to walk away from them to get on a plane and head back home wrenches my heart and robs me of breath but that pain is necessary in order to live through the joy of being with them. I love big dad hugs and long mom talks and getting to know my brother and his family on a real personal level. I LOVE my family. And they are forever a part of me, no matter where life takes me. And I will always, and I mean ALWAYS, find my way back home to them.

Giving shame space in our hearts is closing a door to the life we are supposed to live. Shame disconnects us and sequesters us from living big and living free. It doesn’t serve a purpose and it doesn’t deserve space. Shame, my friends, is like that jackass ex-boyfriend who was apparently obsessed with toilet paper. And both deserve to be dumped. 

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