The Danger of Shame

            Last night I dreamed I was at a reunion of college classmates and found myself unable to speak to any of them. Instead I occupied myself trying to sell a house—trade houses, actually—with people who'd been friends of my first husband and had absolutely no logical reason to be there.

            As it is with dreams, there was a great deal more that didn't make sense, but those are the details I found nagging me as I slowly dragged myself out of sleep. This dream hung on longer than dreams often do, unlike when I wake determined to remember and find I can't quite touch the memory.

            What about that gathering of classmates, the announcements of their accomplishments, had silenced me? Given the juxtaposition of others who didn’t belong there, I can only imagine it was shame. In the years I was married, I cut myself off from many people in my past, in part from shame over the escalating abuse I was enduring.

             If you wonder why I’d feel ashamed about pain someone else was inflicting on me, consider for a minute how we talk about abused women in our society. (I would add how we talk about abused men, except that we don’t talk about abused men.) We respond to stories of women or their children being killed by an abuser—or killing the abuser—with the mantra, "Why didn't she just leave?" Think of the stereotypes of the abused woman: uneducated, poor, dependent. I was none of those, and yet I tolerated it for many years.

            My abuser never sent me to the hospital, never broke any bones. In some ways that made it more difficult to leave, made it easy to think that it wasn't so bad. The shame is no different, though, even when it was just some bruises on my arm from the TV remote that were bad enough to keep me from swimming at a friend's house. Just. The shame cut me off and kept me from help.

            I still find it difficult to talk about. I force myself sometimes, because I know other women in all different circumstances are suffering the same, or worse. Some are financially dependent, with children they don't know how they will care for if they leave. Others may be financially capable and unhindered like I was, but afraid of the unknown, or even their abuser. Or perhaps they’ve just grown numb and paralyzed.

I once worked with a woman who didn't come to work or call in one day because her husband held her at gunpoint all morning. Fortunately, our boss figured out the situation, and she wasn’t fired. She did finally get out, but not without difficulty and help. Even to people who knew, for a while she would still explain injuries by saying she fell in the bathtub. We didn’t believe her, but I understand why.

            Seeing her escape was one small piece of the puzzle that helped me get out, too. I didn't do it without help, and to get that help, I had to be willing to overcome my shame and let someone know what was happening. That was much easier with a living example before me who finally told at least some of her story without being shunned by everyone she knew. It’s funny now that I thought of it that way, but there was a time I feared that’s exactly what would happen if anyone learned my secret.

            That's why I tell my story now, for the other women out there who don't want to admit to their colleagues or friends that they are living a life of fear. Once I was able to tell someone, I suddenly found I had places to go, people who would take me in when I was afraid to stay alone once I finally left, people who would scold but not abandon me when I went back briefly, more than once. I even found support from unexpected places, like a boss who was sympathetic after getting crazy phone calls from my abuser and understood when I needed to get on a plane and take off for a week the day I filed divorce papers. What I hadn't known until that moment is that his own family had been touched by abuse, and the victim in that case did not survive. Even now, it astonishes me how often when I share my past I find I am talking to someone who has experienced abuse themselves.

            The message I hope to send is that no matter how important you are, how respected you are by the people around you, their respect will not diminish when you admit being abused, not if the respect is true. You may find that help comes from more people than you’d ever have imagined, as I did.

            Those of us who have survived bear a special burden, I believe, to keep telling that story. It's a burden I take on reluctantly, because the sense of shame still looms over me, silencing me as it did in my dream. But only when women—and men, too—of all professions, creeds, colors, and classes talk freely about experiencing abuse will we remove the stigma and overcome the shame that keeps those still suffering from speaking up.