Shame is the deepest wound

Warning: Long. And likely to provoke discomfort.

Standing on the kerb in the carpark outside the doctor’s surgery, I tell my daughter she can choose some lollies at the shops, to help the medicine go down. She has a small sore on her leg, which has turned into a rapidly spreading skin infection in the space of a single day. She says something about the lollies, and laughs. I have been so worried for her, but relief is starting to replace the concern. I am relieved to know what it is and that it will be easily treated. I’m relieved I took time off to take her to the doctor when I did, that I paid attention and made the right decisions so that it was caught before it became serious. 

I catch myself feeling secretly proud of this, and I wonder why, because I’ve only done what a parent is supposed to do. 

And suddenly, standing there next to my car, a wave of emotions hits me, and I remember.

Another day, 1985. Another girl, thirteen years old. Another skin infection, untreated. On this day, a teacher notices the pus-filled lesions, and in front of her classmates declares that she has scabies. She is asked to leave the class, she sits isolated in the school office to complete a national maths competition, before she is excluded altogether from the school. She is finally taken to the doctor, and a family member physically assaults her and verbally abuses her in broad daylight in the middle of town.

Writing this is difficult. I still feel ashamed.

The weight of this shame hangs heavily around each detail of the experience, making the telling of it clumsy. I find myself writing too many words about too many parts of it, and each part holds its own deep shade of humiliation.

I had done my best to treat the infected sores with what we had at home, probably some natural product like tea tree oil. But they spread, and after a couple of weeks there were several inches of pus-filled blisters in the crook of my elbow, between my fingers, behind a knee and along one of my forearms. (I have a suspicion there was a lesion on my face, in the corner of my mouth, but I don’t want to remember it). They were sore and itchy, and after the blisters got really big they would leak at inconvenient times. It was disgusting. I was managing it the best I could with tissues and frequent washing.

Being a hot climate, the school uniform had short sleeves, so I had no way to hide them, other than by the careful placement of my limbs. The bulging, creamy-yellow sores had spread, joining into large, irregular shapes that were too big for bandaids. During our compulsory dance classes that required linking arms, I was acutely aware that other people had to put their hands near me, and how repulsive that was. How repulsive I was. But I had no choice. All I could do was hope that in the sweaty teenaged awkwardness of dancing as few people as possible would notice, and absorb the embarrassment. What else could I do? 

I don’t know why no one at home saw how bad it was, or why no one did anything about it. We lived out of town in a rural area, so going to a doctor involved scheduling, driving time, petrol, money. Maybe it was all too much.  Maybe no one thought it needed medical attention. Or maybe I had already learnt to be so quiet that no one noticed at all. But even if it was purely circumstantial, even if it was an oversight, there is no denying the culpability of their actions that day, after the school rang to tell them to collect me and take me to the doctors.

I have trouble remembering the exact order of the events that came next. (I was very distressed). Was it before or after the doctor’s appointment?  I remember being on the kerb, waiting to get into the car. Something happened. Some additional inciting detail that I don’t recall. Maybe there was a parking ticket, maybe there was a car accident, maybe I was crying, or I said the wrong thing. But something in that moment triggered La Narcisse’s fury. 

Right there on the path, next to the car, in the middle of town, she hit me. A strong, open-handed blow that landed on my ear and face, with the full force of arms made powerful from years of using crutches. Pain burst through my head, my face stung and my ear rang. I was instantly sick, dizzy. And it silenced me. Both in that moment – in my pain and shock - and for years afterwards. If someone can hit you that hard, in full view of the world, when you’ve done nothing, what might they do when you’re alone?

And the torrent of abuse:  It was all my fault. Having a skin infection. Letting it get worse. Not keeping it hidden. Getting the teacher’s attention. Allowing her to say it was scabies. Letting her send me out of class. Letting the school ring my mother. Dragging them away from their day. Costing petrol. Costing money for the doctor. Needing medicine. Getting germs, being dirty, being lazy. But most of all, it was my fault for bringing false witness upon my family. For letting everyone at the school think and say those terrible things. Clearly there was nothing wrong with me. I didn’t need to see a doctor, because I’d done a maths competition while I waited to be picked up. I was a liar and a hypocrite. I had lied by everything I’d said and not said, done and not done. I was selfish and self-obsessed.

And after everything else, that is what crushed me. More than the mark left by her hand on my face, more than my ringing ear, more than the abject humiliation of the festering sores, more than being publicly ostracised for my contagiousness, I was devastated – devastated – that I could have wounded my family in this way.    

And I absorbed the entirety of the emotional assault into the deepest part of my psyche.

The child part of me holds the memory of that day clear in my body. I see-feel the places where the sores were, I remember the soft give of the largest blister under my fingertips, the uncomfortable heat of embarrassment. The rare airconditioned respite of the school office as I worked through the competition, alone. The sudden lurch of anxiety at my family’s unexpected hostility. The fearful tightness of trying not to cry in the doctor’s office. The brief, relieved giddiness of holding the prescription. The discordant brightness of the street, and the sudden tunneling of my vision when she hit me. The disembodying shock, disbelief. The silent nausea and rigid tension of the long car ride home.  The cold, piercing ache in my ear, hours later.  

The grown-up part of me struggles to comprehend the totality of that day. I am disturbed on so many levels by what happened. That an adult hit a young teenager in a public place – and was not challenged by any other adult. That I was examined by a doctor, in a state of distress, without it being remarked upon. That there might have been a fresh hand mark on my face at the time of the examination. That the abuse occurred in a situation that should normally warrant care and concern. That the infection – impetigo, school sores – was readily treatable with cheap medicine, and yet it had not been treated. That I was systematically denied access to resources, and then blamed for the consequences. That my mother was there throughout it all, that she participated in those events by not taking action to protect me. And that no compunction was ever shown by the perpetrators, whose perverse logic held me totally responsible, not just for the events over which I had no control, as if disease were a crime, but also for the greater and more heinous moral transgression of betraying and wounding the people I loved.

And in the memory of that day, in all of its layers of shame, of blame, of powerlessness, it’s clear I was already learning a crippling lesson: never ask for help, never show you need it, hide your needs. Ask for nothing, need nothing, be invisible. And tangled through and around that lesson, reinforcing it with its vicelike grip, is shame. Shame has preserved the pain of this experience, kept it locked in its stranglehold, stopped me from talking about it. Some deep part of me still believes I can’t bother anyone with this, as if their need to not be inconvenienced is greater than my need for care, for help, for safety. And when I do ask, I ask in tiny, tentative ways, so that no one ever realizes the scale of the crisis, or the true, shameful, unforgiveable depth of my need.  

I may never get to the bottom of the oozing, toxic shame that is the legacy of that day, and so many other days like it. I am permanently damaged by it. But despite my brokenness, I can be proud of this: I pay attention to my children. I see them and hear them. I notice the small things, like the tiny spot on my daughter’s leg that was starting to escalate into a larger infection. I interrupt my day, take them to the doctor, spend the money, buy the medication. I hug them and tell them I’m glad it’s getting better. I show my children with my words and actions and energy that they matter, they are safe, they are loved.

In these most basic actions of parenting, I’ve done no more than any child deserves. Somehow, by giving those small acts of care to my children, the deservingness of my own child-self is recognized, and the terrible wrongness of my experience is acknowledged. The compassion that flows through me is received by another part of me. In this way, the deepest wound is tended, and it heals, just a little.