Step Four: The Inventory

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves

Guilt and Shame

Who or what do I feel guilty or ashamed about? Explain the situations that led to these feelings.  A lot of self-loathing comes up with this question, and my knee jerk reaction is to immediately curse my self of the past, accusing her of stupidity, weakness and naivete.  The neighbor kids when I was a child exposed me to a lot of no-no things for six year olds.  Pornography.  Explicit acts upon each other.  Locking me under their basement stairs with nothing but a glow in the dark sword and ordering me to kill the spiders there.  Putting me in a dark room while they hide and chant my demise.  I was weak and victimized.  My peers at school were no better, guilting me into doing stupid things and being ostracized at every opportunity.  Teachers did nothing. Some of those girls apologized to me on the last day of school of our senior year.  Fuck y'all, bitches, you're still on my "to kill" list when I snap and hunt down the cunts that made my life a living hell with a five iron and a .22 rifle.  Every flaw was pointed out to me in great detail quite maliciously.  Mostly because we were poor and I couldn't afford the designer fashion shit that made no sense to me at the time anyway.  I was humiliated, assaulted and degraded on a daily basis.  When even at home these hurtful things were reenforced in a violent manner, my self-esteem never got too far off the ground, if at all.  I said the wrong thing, I was wearing something stupid, I wasn't smart enough to brush it off.  I went from a well-adapted child to the social scapegoat, and running away to hide was all I could do to get them to leave me alone.  A girl beat me up on the bus and got away scott-free because she falsely claimed that I had called her a nigger.  What I wouldn't give to call her a nigger to her face now...

Which of these situations have caused me to feel shame, though I had no part in creating them? All of it.  When it's all you know, it's all you can give.

In the situations I did have a part in, what was my motivation, or what did I believe that led me to act as I did? My motivation was to get the fuck outta dodge, did you read that shit up there?! And so the cycle began and has yet to grind to a halt.  I blurt out randomly out loud that "I hate you!" I'm scorning the me that is a child and awkward teenager of course.  I used to hide on the playground so they wouldn't find me, and it didn't always work.  Most of the time I was hunkering down in the library with Michael Pacelli.  He was one of those smart book nerds.  Not even he would risk a friendship with me, so it's no surprise that when the wrong crowd came around they swept me off of my feet into a world of sex, drugs and gangsta rap.  Can't get over my stupidity in the matter, but I suppose that I was so starved for positive peer interaction that I clung to it wherever I found it, including the "tough girls" that were always in the office or violating PINS.

For the record I hate gangsta rap now.

How has my behavior contributed to my guilt and shame? The less you show the less they know.  Running away and finding an escape route of any kind (including drugs and alcohol) has always been priority number one.  It's not so easy with two children I'm struggling to stay in regular, meaningful contact with.  I have horrible guilt in every manner applicable.  Even when technically I shouldn't.  I came within a hair's width of relapsing today, and the morsel of the evening would have been cocaine.  He'll have more tomorrow.  I don't know if I'll be able to say no if/when he offers.

I'm such an asshole. God I'm such a stain.  I just keep fucking up. Again and again
~Ghosty's Gone