More on shame, and being friend-zoned, and Matroyshka dolls

This was supposed to be a Subplots post, but it turned out I had things to say...

Wednesday, July 10th

I’m writing this in my living room at home, my laptop balanced on my knees, with Pebbles by my side. This morning I caved and put the heating on. In July.

Monday’s book group was intense. We’d read chapters 4, 5 and 6 of Straight Jacket, which covered a lot of painful ground.

In Chapter 4 Matthew talks about growing up gay and the survival bond that we form with our primary caregivers. He explains that a sort of shaming is vital for our survival as young children (‘Don’t go near that fire!’ plus a stern, disapproving face = shame, but a shame that is healthy and protective because we can do something about it, i.e. stay away from the flames), but can lead to a negative spiral when we’re being shamed about something we are, rather than something we’ve done. For example, ‘You ought to like football!’ or ‘You shouldn’t like playing with your sister’s dolls!’ or ‘Why can’t you be more like your brother?’, leads us to an internalised shame we can’t do anything about, a feeling that we are wrong, and bad, and shouldn’t have the desires and thoughts we do, even before we really know what those desires and thoughts mean.

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Then, in Chapter 5, he describes how we can carry that shame, that feeling of ‘otherness’ with us into adulthood. We believe we are wrong, somehow. Bad. We become hypervigilant, we try to fly under the radar and to bury the parts of ourselves that society doesn’t find acceptable. It results in the chronic PTSD that comes from having to stay alert all the fucking time, and leads to the classic responses of a this heightened state - fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

I realised I spent my childhood and teenage years in flight. Burying who I was, trying to hide it, not raising my head above the parapet for fear I’d be spotted and shamed. Then, and I’d say until very very recently, that became fawning. I became a people-pleaser, a rescuer, the person who will listen to your problems, the person who always put others first, often to the detriment of myself. ‘Please like me,’ I seemed to be saying. ‘I don’t like myself, so I’m going to need you to do it for me.’

Then, in Chapter 6, Matthew talks about the typical gay experience at school (he focusses primarily on gay men, not the rest of the LGBT+ spectrum, though I’m certain there are parallels across the rainbow). Typically it’s one of being bullied, and usually using homophobic slurs. This shames us even further, drives our fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses even harder. And it’s particularly hard because — unlike being overweight, say (and no, I’m not saying that’s a reason to bully someone, but people do) — there’s nothing we can do about our sexuality. And, Matthew argues, unlike racist bullying (which in no way is he trying to diminish), where the victim at least goes home to a family environment in which he fits in and can be proud (and can maybe even talk about the bullying), the gay kid who’s being bullied often goes home to a family who don’t know he’s gay and in which he might not feel able to come out.

The conversation we had following the reading was sobering. Nine gay men, a wide variety of ages. But for each of us these chapters hit hard. We talked about how hard it was to get help at school, because by admitting we needed help, we had to come out, and often the teachers themselves were part of the problem (particularly after Thatcher introduced Section 28 which effectively prohibited any teachers from being in any way supportive to their LGBT+ pupils and legitimised institutionalised homophobia). So, faced with coming out (and possibly being bullied even harder) or staying silent, so many of us chose the latter, further driving us into the hinterlands of shame.

The way the group works is that we each have five minutes to talk. I hadn’t prepared anything. I just spoke. All kinds of stuff came up, stuff which I’d buried, or forgotten. I talked about my own experiences (which, for a few reasons, I’ve put below the paywall. They’re personal. Painful. I don’t feel like giving them away for free and I writing is my job so I shouldn’t feel I have to). But everyone’s stories were both different and exactly the same.

Interestingly, pretty much all of us described how we can't really remember very much of our childhoods. Not the details, anyway. This is certainly something I’ve found — my therapist will often ask me about something from my earliest years, and usually when I think back there's nothing, just a blank, black hole. As a group we wondered if this was a protective mechanism, perhaps even a dissociation from the trauma we experienced. Something to ponder.

Anyway, at the end of the ninety minutes, we each check in, to say how we’re feeling. I didn’t want to say anything, stuff had been churned up, I needed time to process. But I did tell them (because it was true) that I was glad I’d come, I was happy to be part of the group. When else do a bunch of gay men of varying ages and backgrounds get together, in a sober environment, to talk about our shared and individual experiences, to support and help each other?

And the fact that it’s books that bring us together? Another reminder that I love what I do, that words have power.

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Wednesday, July 10th - EXTRA

Someone else in the group talked about what he called ‘soul murder’. We are shamed by society, taught that this part of who we are is wrong and bad and should be destroyed, and all too often we set about doing just that. We try to murder our soul, or that bit of it which we perceive to be wrong, and bad, anyway.

Later, it occurred to me that this means we have a two-fold job as we get older. It’s true that we carry all the previous versions of ourselves within us, nested like Russian Matryoshka dolls. This includes the bullied, gay child, but it also includes the child who tried to commit soul murder. As we get older, if we are to heal, we must learn to both embrace and nurture that shamed gay child, but also to forgive the other version of ourselves who tried to kill him off.

This is one of the truly devastating things about LGBT+ bullying. It starts off externally, but we quickly assimilate it. We become our own bullies.

Anyway, when it was my turn to speak something else came out that I wasn’t expecting and hadn’t really processed on a conscious level. I realised I’ve had a recent example of how deeply buried the shame is. Last week I was out at an event in a gay bar, and met someone who I’d previously only chatted to online. We go on really well, and spent the evening together. I thought there was a spark between us, and the next day enquired about whether he’d like to go on a date.

I was friend-zoned — let down in the gentlest way possible, and in no way do I resent this (of course I don’t, no one did anything wrong, everyone is allowed their preferences, this isn’t about my disappointment).

What did I feel? Shame. My mind instantly went to ‘You stupid idiot, thinking that someone that handsome and young and fun and with a such a nice body would find you attractive. What the hell were you thinking??’ I was ashamed of myself.

Because of the work I’ve done, I didn’t say in the shame state for very long. I know I’m a good person, I have a lot to offer. I know that not everyone finds me attractive, but some do, and that’s okay, is true of everyone in fact. It took less than five minutes before I’d moved on, I’d had a fun evening, made a new friend. But it was sobering to see how quickly shame reared its head, and while I’m a long long way down the path of letting go of my hypervigilance, and have more or less stopped both the flight response (by trying to hide my sexuality) and the fawning one (by people-pleasing, which would have entailed not even asking him out on a date in case that made him uncomfortable), I’m not all the way there yet.

But y’know what? For that, I forgive myself. I’m okay.