Trigger Warning: Suicide

I'm extremely happy to have found this sub!

Tldr: Found purpose, peace and hope through a practice of dedicated self compassion. Now, befuddled by the next step...

Shame. It walks for me. It talks for me. It guides, to varying degrees, my every decision. Every single one. When challenged, the shame can sometimes erupt into unfettered rage. Unsettling, to say the least...

Why? Why shame?

Simply, I am not who I believed I am. 

As a child, I formulated perspectives about myself and my world based on my environment and the conditions of my upbringing. These perceptions were then used, by me, as the blueprint for the development of my character and personality. My identity. My perceptions were sorely inaccurate, so my brain developed in such a way that it would then be in conflict with itself. Seemingly, forever. The blueprint I formulated contradicted the actual building plans written out in my DNA. From nearly the beginning, I've been at war with myself. Consequently, I'm bipolar with a super heavy dose of shame complex. And, we'll toss a little ADHD in there just to keep things interesting...🙄

I feel like I'm a piece of shit. On a fundamental level. This is a misperception. This feeling I have, that I then translate into a measure of my worth, is not a measure of worth. It's a measure of how disconnected I am from myself. 

Let's say I took the last cookies, even though I had already eaten most of the jar. I know that, Bob, over there, really would like a cookie. I got greedy and ate em all. Now, I feel like a piece of shit. The cookies are gone, Bob's sad and I'm at fault. I should feel shitty. I ate Bob's cookies. Justified shame. 

So lets look at this other shame...

I have a natural trait. A DNA driven facet of my character. Music makes my soul soar. I wanna sing. Been that way since I was 5 years old. But, singing won't make me money, and I'm a "man" so I'm gonna go learn to be a teacher. Or engineer. Or whatever... and I won't sing. But, this education or job I seek does not reflect who I am, just like taking the last cookies didn't. I'm not greedy, and I'm not an engineer. My visceral emotional response to this conflict is this terrible feeling that very closely resembles stolen cookie shame. But, it's very subtly different...

My subconcious responds to the world around it in an emotional manner. It's sort of locked into place as to how this happens. When a response is shame oriented, I am at a greatly reduced capacity to practice emotional maturity and reason. My subconcious does not respond positively to intellectual arguments or even emotional appeals. It only responds positively to sustained, gentle, soothing language and hyper focused compassion and understanding, over long periods of time.  This does not come naturally for me. I've spent some 40+ years doing the exact opposite. Trying to beat, drug, work, and suffer myself into compliance with this identity that doesn't reflect who I am. I stole my own fucking cookies. Hence, shame? Wtf? Makes no sense... and, it yet, does. It's not shame. It's grief. 

Having learned, and then accepting this stuff as an accurate description of my experience, what then? What is actionable? I want steps, goal posts, finish lines... but, there are none... accept one...

There's only one thing left do do. I must abolish the old perceptions. I have to unravel them. Destroy them. Replace them. Go back in time and redraft a blue print. Remove the falsehoods, replace them with truth... by doing only one thing...

Singing. 

Even writing that made tears well up... tears of loss. Grief. Deep pain. Why?

My subconcious doesn't want to be replaced. It's worked long and hard to get where it is, and, changing would mean I was wrong, all along... also, all that time I could have been singing... and i didn't...

There's a death to self and a sense of wasted opportunity. It's deeply troubling. 

A long time ago, I held a pistol in my mouth, intent on ending it all. I couldn't make myself pull the trigger. When I try to sing, it feels like when I couldn't pull the trigger...eerily telling...

  As an aside, in a subtle attempt to regain my identity, I picked up harmonica. 20 years ago now. Even back then, I guess, I had some clue about what I was experiencing...

Anyway, because I've played for so many years, I now have a second voice. Two voices. I've got 2 of em. 

Wow!!!

For 3 weeks I've been trying to busk. It has been the single most difficult thing I've ever tried to do. When I get into public, I feel like an intruder. An imposter. A tourist. It is completely debilitating. I used to think this feeling was just stage fright. That I was "weak" for not being able to overcome it. I understand it differently now. I'm challenging the very foundation upon which I built my entire character. Of course this is hard! 

All i gotta do is sing? 

Yes. 

Damn... it's... so... hard...

Circumstances are such that I am now sort of backed into a corner...

Rent is going up in January. I either have to start making money being me, or I'm gonna have to go back to destroying my soul working by the hour and waiting for Fridays. 

I gave up that life. I won't do it. I fucking refuse.

All I gotta do is sing...

It's a pretty big, "all i gotta do"... big one, indeed. 

Any performers out there with similar challenges? Any thoughts? Thanks, in advance, to everyone who took the time to read all this. All the best to you.