yelling at the kids
just a little bit liberating
I had to yell at some kids last night.
It was 11:30 and I was about to go to bed and they were right below my window and they were so loud that in order to get their attention I had to yell HEY! loudly, so they could hear the person above them who was about to go to sleep.
It was hear-your-own-echo-off-the-trees loud.
It was also the fourth of July so there had already been loud noises all night.
Nobody was nasty, they apologized right away, the noise ended right then and I slept fine. But I felt ashamed.
I’ve only been able to name my feelings for the last five years or so, and I’m grown enough that I don’t experience shame very often. But this time I did. Even though I was fully justified in yelling (I had to in order to get their attention). I hated that I had to yell at them. But why would I feel shame about it?
I don’t want to go all woo on you because it makes me roll my eyes most of the time, but I have an autoimmune condition that attacks my thyroid. That’s the butterfly-shaped organ at the base of your neck. The woo part is that’s the part of the body you might say corresponds to the throat chakra, which is associated with your voice and your self-expression.
I’d never knowingly experienced symptoms of this condition until I had bloodwork done when I was 41 and my thyroid hormones were off. They then looked for the anti-thyroid antibodies, which they found, and I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
Well, perhaps a racing and sometimes loud heartbeat may have been something I experienced, but that mostly went away after I was diagnosed. They say that can happen with Hashimoto’s, that when the thyroid is being actively attacked it can get inflamed and over-produce thyroid hormone and that’s what makes your heart race and thump really loudly in your head.
It’s funny and fortuitous that I should recognize shame as a response to expressing myself, because I had an experience eight months prior to my diagnosis which I am beginning to believe is connected to this issue; self-expression and shame being the themes in common between yelling at the kids and what I’m about to share.
The summer before my condition came to light, while on vacation someone in the group said something inappropriate to me about what I was wearing and it made me completely implode. I could not allow myself to be within their line of sight for the rest of the trip because I did not have any unflattering clothes with me to wear. This may seem superficial and immature, but it took me back to the state of distress I experienced as a thirteen year old when I spent an entire summer wearing a tee shirt over my bathing suit and lying that it was because I didn’t want to be sunburned. No, it was because they had been staring at my chest and I did not have language to speak about how uncomfortable that made me feel. I just went through the rest of my teenage years wearing unflattering clothing and being generally unpleasant all the time without realizing this was why. I did not feel safe at home in my own body.
This piece isn’t about that drunk comment or that moment but I do want to share that after it was said, as I walked back alone to my room enjoying the brief quiet hour the resort allowed its guests, I took a break from wheezing and crying and stood still in a lucky dark spot watching a bat fly in circles around me. The next day I was the only guest on a four-wheel trip to a cave that was populated with hundreds of bats. I love bats.
I returned from that vacation with the worst sore throat I have experienced as an adult. It was not covid. It was not strep. It was not flu. It was not anything for which I was tested. It appeared to be just a random virus. I recovered and moved on with my life. Eight months later I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.
Implosion was the feeling I had after that inappropriate drunk remark was made to me. It had been regarding the most basic form of self-expression, the clothing you wear. It was shame that made me feel like I was collapsing in on myself. Or maybe that is actually just what shame feels like. How awful I am for wearing that and attracting unwanted and inappropriate attention. How terrible I must be for yelling at those kids. In both cases I just wanted to disappear.
The rational part of my being understands that I wasn’t the one at fault in either of those situations. You don’t deserve inappropriate comments directed at you, regardless of how form-fitting your dress is. And sometimes you have to yell above the din to get someone’s attention. But my body doesn’t know this, it just feels the shame of expressing myself and wants to retract. Even writing about this still makes me feel like shrinking. But I hope naming this feeling when I feel it is a first step towards healing the parts of me that are still stuck in the shame, and that hitting “send” might be just a little bit liberating.