none of our transgressions were, or are, related to the quality of our souls. i want to begin here. because before we speak of shame, or love, or anything remotely sacred, we must first dismantle the illusion that suffering renders us unworthy. that our survival instincts, our withdrawal, our fury, our camouflage, are sins rather than strategies. adaptive gestures, not moral failures.

but even knowing this, we still struggle. we replay what we said, what we did, what we failed to do. we loop it until it grows monstrous in our memory. we forget that what felt like a transgression may have simply been a moment of misalignment, between who we were and who we were trying to be. between what we knew and what we were still learning. yes, we falter. yes, we hurt others and ourselves. but those moments are snapshots, not totalities. evidence of impact, not proof of defect.

what you did in pain, in confusion, in fear — it doesn’t encompass the entirety of you. it speaks to a version of you that was surviving the best way it knew how. you are not frozen in that moment. you are not doomed to orbit its gravity forever. the mistake, the rupture, the silence — they were real, and they mattered, but they are not your entire story. you can outgrow the choices you made without exiling the self who made them.

we are allowed to evolve. allowed to integrate the shadow without letting it define the whole. a misstep is not a verdict. remorse is not a life sentence. you are not forever tethered to the worst thing you’ve done or believed or said. what matters is how you carry it. what you choose to build from it. whether you meet it with honesty, with accountability, with the grace to say: i didn’t know better then. i do now. and that knowing is where healing begins.

there’s a quiet brutality in how early we are taught to dismember ourselves in pursuit of acceptance. a parent sighs. a teacher corrects. a friend recoils. and just like that, we begin to believe that certain parts of us are hazardous. too needy. too loud. too emotional. too much. so we contort. we evolve into the versions of ourselves that provoke the least resistance. and somewhere in that becoming, we forget that the core of us was never fractured.

we forget that the soul, by nature, is inviolate, not in the sense of moral perfection, but in wholeness. it is capable of healing, of contradiction, of truth. and yet we carry, like a second skin, the unspoken belief that something inside us is fundamentally defective.

shame is not merely a feeling. it is architecture. a scaffolding built silently into our psyche. it’s not just “i did something wrong.” it’s “i am wrong.” and that shift is seismic. because when you internalize that belief, every decision becomes a strategy for damage control.

you pre-reject yourself before others have the chance. you dim your joy lest you appear boastful. you compress your sorrow so no one accuses you of theatrics. you swallow “i miss you” because yearning feels too exposed. you withhold your need for reassurance, fearing the label of neediness. you cradle your grief in silence, then ache when no one notices your pain. and when they leave, when they don’t choose you, you hold it as evidence. proof that your shame was clairvoyant all along.

this is the narcissism of shame: not self-love, but obsessive self-scrutiny. a compulsive inner monologue that turns every wound into a prophecy.

it is not your fault. let that be unambiguous. you didn’t author this manual. you were born into it. indoctrinated with the belief that worth must be earned. that love is conditional. that closeness must be preceded by correction. if you were celebrated only when you excelled, you learned to become an achiever. if comfort came only when you were quiet, you taught yourself silence. if you were acknowledged solely in moments of utility, you began to equate value with performance. and if, like so many, you grew up amid inconsistent, erratic, or distant love, you learned to find comfort in volatility.

you began to anticipate abandonment as a natural component of affection. and that’s the cruel irony: that love, the very force meant to ground us, becomes the most destabilizing.

we grow. we pursue intimacy. we fall in love. we cultivate friendships. but beneath all our adult masks, a child remains — watchful, trembling. wondering, is this where they walk away? is this when i’ve said too much? felt too deeply? hoped too loudly? and so, rather than confessing our truths, we dance around them.

we say “i’m tired,” instead of “i’m aching for connection.” we say “it’s fine,” while begging someone to ask again. we say “i don’t care,” when care is overflowing, painful in its abundance. we bury our desires beneath irony. we name it “independence,” “cool,” “detachment.” but it’s all armor. meticulously crafted armor. armor we forged long before we understood what vulnerability even was.

communication doesn’t orbit the relationship, it is the relationship. and yet, we wait for people to decode us. to intuit our needs without guidance. to read the unsent letters of our hearts. “if they cared, they’d know,” we mutter. but what if they simply don’t speak the dialect of shame that has become your native tongue? What if the heartbreak isn’t in their apathy, but in your silence? because you didn’t articulate. because you never learned how. because buried somewhere in your chest is the belief that asking makes you disposable.

that expression quickens abandonment. so you muffle your truths, then resent their deafness.

we repeat what we’ve never reckoned with. we recreate the dynamics we swore we’d never revisit. we gravitate toward partners who feel like unfinished sentences. not because they are safe, but because they are familiar. and familiarity, though mistaken for safety, is often trauma in disguise. we confuse recognition with resonance. and then we sit, bewildered, as the same ache returns, dressed in a different name, in a different body.

jung once said, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” we tell ourselves we’re making choices, but so often, we are simply reliving echoes.

real love, true love, is devastatingly tender. terrifying in its softness. because to receive it requires us to step out from behind our armor. to be seen not for our functionality, but for our essence. love demands presence, not performance. it invites your rawest self, not your curated one. and in the silence between exposure and acceptance, shame awakens. shame whispers, “they’ll leave if they see this.” so you ration your truths.

you dilute your longing. you parse your vulnerability into palatable fragments. but here’s the thing: you can’t intellectualize your way into closeness. you either arrive whole or remain distant. and when it ends, when the love you hoped would hold you unravels, the grief is unbearable. not only for the person, but for the version of yourself you believed might finally be understood. for the fantasy that this time, you wouldn’t have to prove your worth. then comes the fury.

a rage that defies logic. “how do i live with this rage?” someone once asked. “it makes existence intolerable.” but there it is. lodged in your ribs like a storm. fury at them. fury at yourself. fury at the child within who never had the tools to fight back. fury that surfaces now, wild, misdirected, desperate.

but that rage is holy. it is not only destruction, but invocation. it is your soul demanding to be witnessed. it is the fire that cauterizes shame. rage is where truth begins. and from truth, we bleed grief. and from grief, we discover softness. and through softness, finally, we find love. not performative love. not conditional love. but the kind that makes room. the kind that holds all your fractures and says, “i see you. and i’m not going anywhere.”

to live like this, to lead with sincerity in a world infatuated with irony, is rebellion. as wallace said, “the new rebels are the ones who dare to be sentimental.” who risk vulnerability in a culture addicted to detachment. who wager beauty against cynicism. who love anyway. despite the risk. despite the cost.

i said what i meant. and i was exactly who i am. that is the final emancipation — not perfection, but presence. not the absence of error, but the fullness of intention. i was conscious. i was clear. and even if i was younger, more naive, more afraid, i spoke from the heart i had. i made the choices that made sense to the self i was. and that matters.

people always say, “if i could go back, i’d tell my younger self this or that.” but i wouldn’t speak over him. i wouldn’t lecture or correct. i’d sit beside him, not to revise him, but to witness him.

because that child didn’t need more instruction. he needed connection. someone to look at him and say, “i see you. i hear you. and you’re not wrong for feeling it this deeply.” back then, he said what he meant, not because he knew everything, but because he knew something. something true. something real. and even if not everyone stayed, some did. and that’s enough. enough to know that honesty doesn’t always bring safety, but it brings clarity. and clarity, even when it costs us, is its own kind of peace.

maybe love isn’t the crescendo. not the firework or the kiss in the rain. maybe love is the quiet remembering. the long walk home to the parts of yourself you thought you had to exile. maybe love is the person who meets you there. not to fix you. but to walk beside you. word by word. wound by wound. hand in hand.

it’s you choosing yourself. stopping the performance. ending the exile. returning — untamed, undiluted, unafraid. and being met there by someone who says, “i see you. and i’m not going anywhere.”

note:

june holds a special place in my heart. i might be writing a little something on it soon.

men, women, we’ve got to learn how to live beside each other, not above, not beneath, not against. there’s no real future in realism. the future belongs to the delusional. the ones who believe in love anyway. who try anyway. who dream with their whole chest even when it cracks a little.

to all the men—

happy men’s mental health month. i hope you do it all. i hope you give it all. and even if you don’t, even if all you did was try, you’re enough. some days, it’s okay to ask someone to help you lift the weight you’ve been carrying alone for too long. that boat on your shoulders was never meant to be rowed solo.

you got this, boy. keep going.