A Letter to My Dearest Friend of the Hour

Dear Shame,

How have I been?, you ask. It’s obvious, I’m shameful. I feel like a bad sister and role model for my younger sister, even a worse daughter to my mother, who, I would never trade for another. I replay every mistake, tiny or huge, in my head over and over again until it is permanently burned inside my brain. As I try not to let the scarring heal, my heart swells to unimaginable size with the burdens it is filled to the brim with. My hands shake at the thoughts that come out of my head and voice themselves to my friends through my throat and that float out of my mouth. “I’m a nice person” I tell myself. “I’m a good person” I remind myself. But every day at dusk I yell at myself “I am a selfish, horrible, and shameful person.” This is why I write back to you Shame. For years I have ignored you and told lies about you, but the only person I was telling lies to was myself. I can change, I just know I can. Change doesn’t happen overnight though, sometimes I wish it was that easy. The first step to changing something bad is knowing it has a problem. Thank you for trying with me, for begging me to change. Now, I have decided that the wait is over.

A Shameful Person,

Katherine Dawn