My Friend Shame (2022)

Many people confound shame with guilt. No. Shame embeds deeper than guilt. It courses through your veins and knocks on the door of every thought until you yield or break. You can’t suppress it; it controls you. If guilt is a child spilling chocolate pudding over a new rug, shame is that same child in adolescence, snapping at his mom for bringing him fresh strawberries, not for a lack of love for her, but for a lack of love for himself. Guilt is the feeling that you did something wrong, and shame is the feeling that you are wrong. It’s no small difference.

When Covid swept over the world, I fled on a red-eye flight to Vancouver. I was just beginning to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and in the ensuing frenzy of the pandemic, I lost my mind. I kept this a secret from even myself, because the alternative was admitting that I had lost my mind, and that felt justifiably… way worse. So instead of shaping my wispy ideas for a career into a tangible plan of action, I sat in my room alone for months and months, delirious, gaming, and sleeping over empty boxes of pepperoni pizzas inhaled in single sittings. Yet it appeared to others that I had everything all under control.

As restrictions eased and I was able to land in Los Angeles, I received a wake-up call, courtesy of 1–800-SHAME.

“Did you hear? John and Stacy already have jobs lined up after graduation. And they’re getting paid like… adult money.”

“Yeah, that’s cool. I’m happy for them.”

“Oh, later today we’re gonna go to Culver City… in Josh’s new car! Haha, he’s been driving us around.”

“Oh yeah, that’s great. You should have fun.”

Design is one of those things that you can’t just… do. Landing a career in design is like solving a chicken-and-egg problem, meaning that you need to have solid design experience to be a designer, but you need to be a designer to get real design experience. This was something that I didn’t register at the time, because I had no real idea of what it meant to be a designer. Actually, I had no real idea of what it meant to be employed. Or how to drive.

Shame stressed to me that I was a boy, unequipped to solve the puzzle of keeping his house of cards in America from tumbling down. Somehow, I was still in a position to contemplate whether or not to put my high school jazz band participation awards on my resumé.

“So, do your parents still book your flights for you?”

“Why the fuck are you asking me that.”

“It’s for a project dude… what?”

My quasi user interviews were going nowhere, and the expensive bootcamp that promised me the glitz and glamour of a design job was looking more and more like that aggressive dude pushing you his mixtape on Fairfax. Turns out, when you dash home to play his mixtape, it’s just an audio loop of him and his friends rolling in a bed of your cash, laughing at you for hoping that he’d dare offer anything more.

To say that I felt fucked-fucked would be a massive understatement. I felt fucked, fucked-fucked-fucked-fucked, and my dreams felt higher and more unreachable than my college roommate on a Monday morning.

In my lows, I drank a bitter cocktail, brimmed with clarity that none of my work held value for my career, composed of a churning awareness that my “friends” were not my friends, and topped with the feeling of seeing my mom exhibit early signs of her sickness.

Once shame finds his home, he will never leave. He stays on still nights, when no eyes are looking, no ears are listening. On still months, when despite trying your best, no progress has been made. On still years, when despite failure, after failure, after failure, your actions remain aligned to the promises you made for yourself, and keep for those you love. And after then, with time, when his presence fades into the background, a certain breed of pride will begin to lay in his stead—a quiet confidence that lives inside the chest and affirms with every breath:

“This is mine… I earned this.”