It was when he was a child, this little boy, called JJ, that he was placed in a cage of shame. The cage was built slowly, a small bar was placed first at his feet so that when he tried to move forward, towards a better place where he could still make mistakes without being judged, or mistreated, he tripped over it, just because he dared, to be human.
The cage was built slowly, like a plastic object built on a D3 printer. The first layer was built when, for the first time his mother didn't praise him when he got an A at school. He interpreted that omission as being told he was not good enough and he felt a shame he could never forget. From that moment he interpreted every gesture and every omission as directly saying to him: 'You are unworthy'. The emotional neglect, the physical abuse and the abandonment did the rest.
So to cover up the shame, the shame of being himself, the shame he did not want to feel because it burned his soul and hurt, like boiling oil poured on the skin, he built an armour of protective behaviours, some parts of him that became his mask, a fake identity which appeared automatically, to protect himself from feeling the shame of feeling unloved.
The cage of shame was nothing else that all of those parts of him, like his perfectionism, not giving him peace, making him burn out, and shaming him even more, because there is only one perfect being governing our wonderful imperfections, and He is none of us.
But the thicker bars of his cage of shame were made by his dishonesty, from the way he felt he needed to be to feel accepted and loved; the dishonesty he first needed to survive because a child deprived from love, dies, and, in the dilemma of the choice between authenticity and being loved, he has to abandon himself over and over again to choose to be loved. His dishonesty, creating even more shame, because if we don't act accordingly to our conscience we cannot look at ourselves in the mirror any longer, don't you know?
The cage of shame was his isolation, telling him he didn't need no one because he had learned to find the right distance from people, far enough not to be hurt and close enough to feel just enough connection to survive.
JJ who survived and never lived in order not to feel his shame was swallowed by quicksand, and to pull himself out of it, every now and then, when he was almost buried by that thick, viscid substance he had to use the only energy he could find, his rage, cried out loud, towards injustice and towards himself, the one he learned to hate so much.
His rage, who exploded for a nothingness, like a fire near an oxygen source, like a vulcano and its lava, his only viable request for love, to be restored. His rage, bottled up under a quietness which was interpreted as shyness, and as kindness; his rage, frozen like meat pieces, like the feeble sparks of his spirits and the stalactites of his tears.
His rage, which became the most authentic part of him, that part who took over, who drove him towards liberation, towards the darkest tunnel he had to cross, alone, once more, walking out of his comfort zone and feeling the terror of a child who is facing the fear of a solitude a few have experienced; a child, walking on the edge between survival and the desire to die and pushed forward from that crying desperate need of being authentic; to walk, himself, towards the light of resurrection.
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