When I was a child, I lived with what I now know was an unbearable amount of shame. I believed there was something inherently wrong with me. I was separate, and unique. This belief meant both that I could never be a good person and that everyone else must be-since they could not be contaminated in the way I was. This shame lead to me believing that because others were better, they were also smarter than I; it followed, in this flawed logic, that I was only capable of a narrow understanding contained within the broader knowledge that others had. In addition, I believed they could see and think the same things I did; again, because they had access to better and more in everything. I had to spend my my life hiding my brokenness, because if I were found out then I would be rejected and ostracized. It took a long time to discover that I was not that different, and that others were not "better". However, for all those years, I had to make sense of things from the perspective outlined above.
In the time before I was aware of this tendency, it was a tremendously antagonistic world that reinforced my shaming beliefs. Because I thought everyone was seeing the same things in the same ways as me and drawing the same conclusions (because "it is just obvious given the information at hand"), I assumed that every act contrary to my own thinking was an intentional insult. It was as if someone were pointing out my faults through the circumstances. If there was anything wrong in a situation, it was because of me (being that I was the broken one) and everyone was going to see how wrong I was. Every error was a chance that someone could find out my secret: that I was semi-human and a danger to others. It is an incredibly complex dynamic that I am simplifying here in order to focus this discussion. There were compensatory mechanisms whereby I would point out the mistakes of others in order to bolster my own ego, or pretend indifference to avoid rejection, or many other methods to combat the central belief around being broken.
The impetus for writing this, and the title indicating that I am not alone in these things, comes from an understanding that not admitting it is part of the problem. I was convinced that anyone who found out the "truth" about me would expel me from from society; however, I have learned that is not true. Secrecy is the lie that shame uses to shield itself from discovery, because exposure is the event which leads to recovery. At this point, I will recommend the work and writing of Dr. Brené Brown for more on the topic of shame. My own efforts here are a further exposure of my shame in order to continue to diminish it while empowering more helpful beliefs. Moreover, I think that you, in reading this, have underlying assumptions which guide your own thinking. It may be that you have shame, or another harmful dynamic, at work keeping you from even contemplating the possibility of connecting with others and of being vulnerable with those important to you. Or of sharing with those who are seemingly different from you.
Given how divided and divisive these times are, I am hopeful that this brief story can introduce the idea that we are all not that different. None of us are so unique that we cannot connect with others. Others likely saw an egotistical, aloof, solitary, belligerent, and angry man when they looked at the younger me, yet all that came out of pain and self-hatred. No one is so far gone that there is no hope. Consider only that it may be our own shortcomings, or those issues that others are facing, which get in the way of attempting to bridge those divides.
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