From the Archives | To Be Loved Completely

On shame and how I am slowly letting go

Hello and welcome to Fellowship of Oddities. My name is Tiffany, and I write personal essays crafted to give you a unique perspective connecting obscure ideas to real life.

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Dear Inklings,

This essay is from the archives that I’ve unlocked for all subscribers today and reposted like this. If you enjoy this publication and find value in these posts, become a paid member to unlock more like this.

Many thanks to

Annika Spalding

for becoming a paid member this week. She said, “I enjoy what I've read so far of your writing, and I've also loved the interactions we've had. Looking forward to reading more, and getting to know the genius behind the words.” Thank you so much for being here, Annika.

With Love,

This essay was first published on 15 November 2023.

1. “You are an idealist,” my ex used to tell me, as though such a word could fling shame. And it did. “I’m a realist. We’re too different.”
   
   For years I rejected that word as a description of myself. I rejected everything about myself that could have possibly been a reason for him to reject me. Which, as it turned out, felt like everything. I shed my skin and tried to mold myself into something completely opposite of what I was.
   
   He said I was an idealist. He made me cynical.
   
   He said I was too open. I hid away.
   
   He said I was too emotional. I shut off my feelings.

2. It wasn’t the first time I knew shame. The deep sense that something was inherently wrong with me, that I was born wrong, that I should never have been born always lingered in me from the time my mother who birthed me told me her life would have been better without me.
   
   How does a child live with something like that?
   
   And he? All he did was confirm that belief I stored in my soul: that something about me was inherently unlovable and unwanted.
   
   After all, if the one who brought me into the world could say that about me, what hope was there for me?

3. Time is a strange concept. It marches on while parts of me remain firmly planted in the past. It begs the question, who am I, really?
   
   Am I the five-year-old girl clawing at her parents’ locked door, crying to be let in?
   
   Am I the seventeen-year-old standing at the edge of the roof, looking down at the cars below, and wondering how quickly the pain could end?
   
   Am I the 23-year-old who found unconditional acceptance in a man who loves her for all she is?
   
   Am I an idealist? Am I now a realist? Am I too much? Am I lovable? Am I lovable? Am I lovable?

4. When I  first met Ren¹, he asked me the same questions. He told me he thought he was wicked, and that was why nobody wanted him.
   
   I told him it was a lie his mind told him, and that his worth wasn’t based on the opinions of outside people who couldn’t see him.
   
   I knew something of the shame of being.
   
   In teaching and showing him, I taught and showed myself the opposite of what I’d always believed of myself too.
   
   He believed me when I said I loved him completely. I believed him when he said he loved me the same.

5. “The rest is confetti.”²

Articles I enjoyed reading this week—

• Beautiful essays from

  Esmé Weijun Wang
  who wrote about the fear of being secretly lazy and
  Jeannine Ouellette
  telling her children and grandchildren the world is good even as it falls apart,
  The Rewind
  who wrote about a horrible memory that made her despise Thanksgiving.

• In culture and society,

  Mo Kanjilal Williams
  highlights the importance of talking openly about death.
  Anne Helen Petersen
  reveals the myth of individualism, while
  Sarah Fay Writers at Work
  posits that the “friendship recession” is a good thing.
  Rachel Katz
  breaks the taboo of talking about infertility and questions why people automatically assume it’s the woman’s fault, and
  Haley Stewart
  pushes back against the “trad wife” movement.

• On Substack and writing,

  Daisy Buchanan
  gives tips for sustainable Substacking, and
  Rosie Spinks
  shares 8 rules she follows for writing her newsletter.
  SLANT LETTER
  writes about the importance of writing a memoir that’s not all about you.
  Martin Prior
  breaks down how long it would take to make a full-time income with Substack.

1. If you’re new here, Ren is my oldest child who died in 2021.

2. Nell Crain’s monologue from The Haunting of Hill House series:

"I feel a bit clearer now. Everything's been out of order, Time, I mean. I thought for so long that time was like a line, that... that our moments were laid out like dominoes, and that they fell one into another, and on it went. Just days tipping, one into the next, into the next, in a long line between the beginning... and the end. But I was wrong. It's not like that at all. Our moments fall around us like rain, or snow, or confetti.

You were right. We have been in this room, so many times and we didn't know. All of us. Mom says that a house is like a body, and that every house has eyes, and bones, and skin, and a face.

This room is like the heart of the house. No, not a heart, a stomach. It was your dance studio Theo. It was my toy room, it was a reading room for Mom, a game room for Steve, a family room for Shirley, a tree-house. But it was always the Red Room. It put on different faces so that we'd be still and quiet. While it digested.

I'm like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

I learned a secret. There's no without, I am not gone. I'm scattered into so many pieces, sprinkled on your life like new snow.

Forgiveness is warm. Like a tear on a cheek. Think of that and of me when you stand in the rain.

I loved you completely. And you loved me same. That’s all. The rest is confetti.”