Today in the Book of Shame-Being the Writer and the Wound

 Today in the Book of Shame

To the finest of them all,

I think you should read this in front of a mirror—yes, stand there, steady yourself, and look into your own eyes. Watch how they tremble. Watch how your broad face holds its silence when these words begin to press, then pierce, then settle beneath your skin. Do not look away. You owe yourself that much—to witness the unraveling as it happens.

Because this is the account of that morning.

The brisk walk—do you remember it? The one that was meant to be precise, measured, disciplined. Footsteps aligned like soldiers in quiet agreement. But something broke. Not loudly, not dramatically—just a subtle betrayal in the knees, a trembling that turned certainty into hesitation. A walk no sane mind would willingly take, yet you took it. You carried it.

The old book asks, “How can two walk together, if they are not in agreement?”
I will not pretend to answer that. I will not pretend I know which part of you refused the agreement. But I watched you sit at that dusty table, and I watched the stillness swallow you whole.

You did not just sit—you marinated.

In shame.

A slow, suffocating kind. The kind that does not scream at first, but instead wraps itself around your ribs, tightening with every breath until breathing itself feels like a confession. You looked into that hole—the one that opened beneath you—and you tried to measure it. You thought if you could just understand its depth, you could survive it.

But some depths are not meant to be known. Only endured.

And still, you leaned closer.

You wanted the fall. You wanted to be swallowed, to disappear into that blackness where maybe—just maybe—you would no longer have to explain yourself. No more trembling. No more pretending. Just silence.

But instead, it kept you spinning.

Endlessly.

A cruel suspension—neither falling nor escaping. Just circling, dizzy, unhinged, untethered. Your hands reached out, desperate for something—anything. Every shadow became a branch. Every illusion, a promise. But your fingers closed around nothing.

Nothing.

And the emptiness echoed louder than any scream you tried to release.

You gasped—not for air, but for meaning. For grounding. For something solid enough to remind you that you still existed outside of this shame. But the more you reached, the more it slipped away. The spinning did not stop. The dizziness did not soften.

And the cries—those loud, breaking cries—remained unanswered.

Especially that day.

You wanted to be buried in it, didn’t you? To let the shame cover you completely so you would not have to face the aftermath—the crumpled edges of what once held you together, the twisted strands of yourself you no longer recognized, the noise of a world that did not pause to ask if you were okay.

You wanted silence.

But silence did not come gently. It came heavy, pressing, suffocating.

So here you stand.

In front of that mirror.

Still spinning in places no one else can see. Still reaching for roots that disappear the moment you believe in them. Still carrying a shame that does not announce itself, but lingers—quiet, persistent, unrelenting.

Tell me—do you see it now?

Not just the face.

But the fracture beneath it.

Because this is not just a memory.

It is a record.

And today, in the Book of Shame… you are both the writer and the wound.