When shame is the oldest feeling

I don't when it was the first time I felt intense shame. I have carried with me throughout all phases of my life. It creeped in early on, shaped by the people who were supposed to empower me. It served them well because they got exactly what they wanted: compliance, fear and obedience. It is a small prison where I have been trapped all my life, and no matter how hard I tried to break it, it only pulled me back in. The invisible chains have kept me from growing in the same places where most found their voice and wings. Isolated, silent, in pain and paralyzed. I don't remember exactly what the 'caregivers' said to me when I was small, because I blocked most of it out of my head. All I know is that I am left with this feeling, locked in a deep prison within myself, where I have never really been able to get out. Maybe for some moments here and there but I always fell back in.

I left my abusive home at 17, travelled all across the world, experienced altered states many times and tried to find home in the most unexpected of places. But always ended up in this place that was always familiar but never really home. This prison of shame, where I am never enough or too much or something to be deeply hated, resented or ridiculed. I was standing in places looking for acceptance, love and belonging yet I was dissociated at the same time, because in my head I was trapped. It kept reminding me that there is no place on this earth or this universe where I was supposed to feel at home. An eternal misfit in every aspect. A prisoner in my own body. The martyr in my own story.

When shame is the oldest lens through which I have looked at life, every experience adds more chains, more walls and throws me in deeper. People find me odd, withdrawn and absent. They wonder what's going on and add their own interpretation. They don't feel the heaviness of the chains around me.

My mind makes a checklist of things I need to overcome and creates an image of what I will be when I've defeated the oldest of my demons. Maybe found a place where I finally belong. Chasing that fantasy while life is happening. But I know that life itself will end one day. And I know that I don't want die in the pursuit of chasing a fantasy. At the same time I don't know how to get out.