I strangled the phone silent before a second ring could escape.
Tossing it to the other side of the bed I laid back down.
I didn’t want to sleep, but I didn’t want to be awake. I didn’t want to think, but that didn’t stop my brain from doing so.
Afternoon sun warmed the ceiling, painting shadows over the textured popcorn. I couldn’t draw blinds to mute out the daylight.
I no longer had blinds.
My ex-wife had taken them all when she left.
The phone rang again.
I picked up the pillow and smothered my face with it. I wanted the ringing to stop. I wanted it all to stop.
Why couldn’t the world leave me alone?
The phone fell silent.
I said a silent prayer.
The phone offered another ringing hymn.
I cursed both prayer and phone.
I didn’t want to answer because I didn’t want to hear the voice on the other end. Unsure of the caller, but it didn’t matter. A week after my voice only two tones of voices came from my phone. The whispered sorrowful voice, quiet and warm. The way someone would speak to a frightened animal in hopes of not sending it scampering into the woods. Or a voice with an edge. A cracking whip at the end of every word, stinging and cutting at the back of my soul with lashes of guilt and shame.
I already struggled under the weight of my own shame. Trying my best to tread water without the extra burden pulling me down into an ocean of depression. I could carry my own shame. But the shame of others would be what might finally pull me down into a murky blackness, all without a way to escape.
The Weight of Shame
There’s a lot to process in the wake of divorce. No matter how ready for it you believe you are, you’re not. Even if it’s your call, your decision, your move, nothing prepares you for that first step onto the other side.
For me, it wasn’t my call. At least I didn’t have the bravery to make it my call. I should have pulled the extension cord sending emergency power to our relationship long earlier, but I didn’t.
Sometimes it takes strength to let things go.
I didn’t want it to be the end and yet it needed to be the end. At some point in time, there’s just no more track for your lives to continue together. There’s a final stop, and you have to get off.
You can see the end coming. But it doesn’t stop the pain.
The death of your relationship can slice you open, can bleed you dry. You can feel that wound with every breath. Every beat.
And yet it’s not the only weight you’re forced to carry. For me, when I didn’t want to go out, spend time with friends or see family, it wasn’t just because I’d rather remain inside with puffy eyes and tear-stained canyons running down my face, but the shame I felt.
The shame I felt as a failure. As a kid that didn’t know what I was doing. There was a relative who always seemed to have a different significant other with every visit. A different spouse. A different lover. I quipped more than a few times about the shortness of supposedly meaningful relationships.
I had become that.
Not only did I feel the shame of the present, but I felt shame for what I said in the past.
I grew up in a religious household. My father was a pastor, but my mom held tighter to certain dogma. Talk of divorce came in the shadows. In whispers. Behind closed doors.
I could feel the whispers on my back. Pressing down. Forcing my head to sink. The shame of failure can be heavier than any weight.
Not that I felt shame from my immediate family. But from the outside. From church. From the religious friends who unfollowed me on social media. My Instagram suddenly unclean.
You might have felt the same. From a strict family where even if you’re not happy, you don’t consider divorce because it might dishonor fathers and uncles, grandmothers and cousins. It’s not about you. It’s about the family.
You might have felt it at work, in the way others looked at you. The way voices lowered when you approached.
Sometimes shame is as hard of a burden to carry as is the death of your love.
There are few other instances in life where you’re forced to deal with the death of something you care about and the shame of experiencing that death.
Your Shame Doesn’t Need to be Shame
I stopped going to church. I avoided messages and emails.
I didn’t want to feel the guilt. The shame. The picking at a wound sliced across my heart that hadn’t begun to heal.
I never gave any of it a chance. In my mind, they’d whisper and talk amongst themselves. The pastor’s boy didn’t understand marriage. Shame. He’s a failure. Now he’ll be judged.
But maybe that wouldn’t have happened. At least not to the extent.
Much of the shame I felt I eventually realized I self-manifested. I crafted stories and backgrounds and reasonings to the shame deep within my own mind. And once such a mental seed is planted, it’s difficult to kill. It’s a weed that sprouts throughout the mind.
I think I created more of the shame than anyone else ever bestowed upon me.
Looking back, years later, the shame I felt didn’t need to be the shame I felt. It didn’t need to be as severe. As damaging and depressing.
Some of your own shame from failed relationships might not need to be as debilitating as well. Yes, it’s impossible to escape what immediate family brings. Because they will find a way to tell you. It’s the outside shame you tell yourself exists you needn't worry about. It’s never as bad as what you believe if it’s there at all.
There were many things I’d change about the way I handled divorce. How I closed myself off and boiled my mind in venomous ideas of guilt and pain. If you’re going through something similar right now, just know the shame you feel doesn’t need to exist. The shame from family is their own selfishness, and the shame from outsiders is their own misunderstanding.
You understand.
The pain of relationship loss is real and it will linger. But don’t mind the minds that bring shame. Focus on yourself and your own healing. Because those who do care and understand will rise to the surface. They will be there to pull you out. You just need to let everything else fall to the bottom.
A travel story I wrote several years ago: Travel for the Soul (Even if You Don’t Have One)
A retelling of my failed honeymoon as I experience the same journey a decade later: I retraces my steps, from Miami to Machu Picchu, as I looks to recover what's lost and discover if it's possible to find oneself while traveling for the soul.