Of Shame
Seattle Pt. 3/3
Talking about Seattle these last posts, I’ve probably made life sound awesome. This is not untrue, but I want to talk about something difficult here.
During this trip, I was mostly battling shame. I felt ashamed of the position of my life. Everything I did there was pressure on an active insecurity I bear about my life: I have a thin capacity of financial strength. Let me say it less with my mind and more with my chest: I’m broke. I state myself plainly here: after budgeting for groceries, bills, and pathetic attempts at savings, I have enough to do whatever I want as long as it does not exceed $12 per day. Anything more than that, I’m accruing debt. I am 32 years old, and I could only afford a youth hostel on a trip that needed the reward points I usually use for visiting home for Christmas so that I could attend my friend’s wedding.
Here, I invite no advice about gratitude. I would assure anyone that my capacity for gratefulness runs deeper than sunrise.
So let me state my little life. I am here not for lack of trying. This is simply where I’m at, but I did expect things to be different at this point. Shall I offer a litany?
2017 — finished grad school and working multiple jobs to pay for it out-of-pocket, 100 days of solo travel for a well-deserved claim to victory, completed first foreign language exam
2018 — returned to US to fully commit to entrepreneurism in establishing a cultural center for storytelling
2019 — unemployment started Feb 1, moved to Boston, MA from Orange, CA with then-girlfriend in July to support her at Harvard Law School, started publishing company
2020 — employment started Jan 7, a few months before pandemic started when my livelihood was exposed to be a feature of convenience since I was only a contract employee
2021 — broke up with said partner, decided to move to DC and restart life, completed second foreign language exam
2022 — I’m awesome and started a fantastic, purposeful new job in a city I love, closed publishing company
This list is likely more for me than anyone else.
It echoes deeply in my life. It appears in friendships and dating. Finding the words in a recent therapy session, I feel my financial weakness limits the generosity I would like to live by, and my shame for this buries the sense of my gifts I bring to any place.
I can imagine people of my life finding surprise in this. I have not been one to be very mindful of money or concerned with making enough as a matter of being happy. Even still, I do not want to be this person. How is it that the number of our bank accounts come to seemingly reflect who we are? I know my presence. I affirm my gifts in appreciation, in being safe company, in making people I share physical space with feel as if they are the only person on the planet. I wield focus.
CODA:
Yet how has it happened that I am also always guarding myself from being “found out” as a fraud?
CODA:
What part of me can I focus on instead of this sentiment of lack?
CODA:
To what extent is focusing on what you can control actually naivety?
To what extent is focusing on what you can control actually ignorance?
CODA:
More soon,
Trevor