Damage Assessment

Photo by the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection

I've always been a bit of a weather geek, and tornadoes have fascinated me for decades. They're simultaneously the most frightening, most awesome and even the most beautiful weather phenomenon in existence. I live vicariously through storm chasers like Reed Timmer and Canada's Dave Patrick, watching as they get up close and share the excitement and awe they express as much as I can via an Internet connection. Something I find interesting is how their excitement can turn very quickly to dread when they realize that a tornado is about to or has hit a populated area and people or animals may be hurt.

When I started to come to terms with my depression, I spent some of my time thinking over the relationships I've had over the years. It wasn't pretty. What I saw in my mind was the type of damage you would see from a powerful tornado - only a narrow strip of land affected, but complete devastation within that strip. Buildings were leveled, trees stripped of foliage and bark and people wandering around wondering how they would rebuild.

The question I asked myself was, "Did the lives of any of those people improve in any way as a result of knowing me?" At the time my immediate answer was no, and even now I struggle with the answer after finding medication that helps control the depression and with a few months of therapy under my belt.

For the longest time I thought I had been holding onto the guilt of how I acted during those relationships, but recently I realized that what I was holding onto was shame. The light bulb moment came while listening to an audio CD of Brené Brown. Something she said hit me like a freight train:

Guilt is, "I made a mistake". Shame is, "I am a mistake".

I felt completely eviscerated when I heard that... I am a mistake. It captured in four words what I had been feeling for close to 30 years but couldn't articulate.

The shame that I've felt for leaving that strip of total devastation has been overwhelming, and has seemed to compound itself like interest on a maxed credit card. It's as if the tornado has done nothing but grown larger and stronger over the years and no matter what I tried to do differently the damage still occurred. I have wanted to think that I was a good person, treating other people well, but my shame was preventing that. To me, the damage was visible to anyone just like in the picture above - a scar across the landscape that may take a lifetime to repair, if ever.

Now that I'm being treated, I can't say for certain when if ever I'll feel better about all this. I suppose the transition from shame to guilt means that what I perceived to be permanent, irreparable damage can indeed grow back just as the trees will in that forest. That transition probably also means that I can move from a place where an apology for how I treated someone would seem so grossly inadequate that I couldn't do it, to this:

If you were among the people who I didn't treat well for whatever reason, please accept that I'm truly, deeply sorry.