This Shame Is Not Mine
Learning that the belief that you deserve to be in pain is a bunch of bullsh*t.
On a February day in 2005, I was working my restaurant job in New York City on an insultingly sunny morning, two weeks after my friend and creative partner Nicole Dufresne had been shot and killed on the Lower East Side. How dare the fucking sun shine, I thought. How dare anyone order coffee and eggs? I was shuffling around waiting tables while my coworkers stared. Whenever I’d catch one of them looking at me, they’d shift their eyes away, making an unconscious little grimace. At the staff meal, one of them had asked me what Nicole had said to make the kid who’d shot her in the chest shoot her. I just heard a faraway ringing as someone else said, “Leave her alone, man.” It was so fucking weird.
It is hard to come up with words for how fucked up things felt, and have felt ever since then. I touched on Nicole’s death in an essay I wrote last week, about how I’m beginning to see how many of the decisions I’ve made since she died have been tethered in one way or another to that night when her fiancé and my boyfriend and I dumbly, numbly sat in a police station, trying to grasp that what had happened was real. It still doesn’t feel real all these years later. I haven’t written much about it, or her, up until now, but I’m starting to try.
The media coverage of Nicole’s murder was voracious, because she was beautiful, and tabloid-ready (and white). The New York Post ran her headshot on the cover with the headline “Beauty Slain”. They wrote about how we had been out drinking (how many drinks had we had? reporters demanded to know); how our paths had crossed with seven kids who were out looking to fuck shit up; how they mugged us; how one of them hit Nicole’s fiancé in the face with a gun; how Nicole had been angry; how she’d supposedly asked the kid, “What are you going to do now, shoot us?”; how he’d shot her. A deluge of articles and essays and letters to the editor, and, later, novels and TV shows, speculated about how things could have turned out differently if Nicole had tamped down her fierceness and just kept quiet. Like it was her fault she’d been murdered.
At the staff meal, one of them had asked me what Nicole had said to make the kid who’d shot her in the chest shoot her.
I was refilling the restaurant owner’s coffee as he sat reading the newspaper over his daily breakfast of soft scrambled eggs, when his hand shot out and grasped my wrist. He peered up at me over his wire-rimmed glasses. I looked back at him, wondering what he was going to say about things being Nicole’s fault, or my fault. “You know, survivor guilt is a real thing,” he said quietly. I was so angry that I couldn’t say anything to him. I’m just trying to pour you a fucking coffee and get through this fucking shift until I can go home and not feel like a specimen, like a locus of everyone’s weird pity-slash-judgment. I nodded at him mutely, somehow made it away from his table (nearly dropping the coffee carafe), and went to scream into my latte-stained apron in the bathroom.
Now, all these years later, I can understand what he was saying: that the guilt I had about Nicole’s death, and of me not being dead, would change me, and that the accompanying shame would take a toll. That it would be easy for people to make me feel shame because I would carry the weight of it every day. That I’d be susceptible to people who would use my predisposition to shame for their own ends. The restaurant owner was the child of Holocaust survivors; he knew what guilt and shame did to people. He was trying to warn me, and it turns out, he was right.
I can understand what he was saying: that the guilt I had about Nicole’s death, and of me not being dead, would change me, and that the accompanying shame would take a toll.
Shame has been identified as a key emotional response to trauma exposure; trauma and shame are often intimately linked. From the UK-based Khiron Trauma Clinics website:
“When a person experiences a traumatic event… they may feel a profound sense of powerlessness and vulnerability. These traumatic experiences can shatter a person’s perception of safety, trust, and control over their life. Shame can arise from the belief that you are fundamentally flawed, unworthy, or deserving of the trauma you experienced. Victims often internalise the blame, feeling responsible for what happened or believing they could have prevented it.
“When shame becomes intertwined with traumatic experiences, it can intensify the emotional impact and make the trauma more difficult to cope with. The shame may lead the individual to blame themselves for the traumatic event, believing they deserved it or were somehow responsible for it happening. This self-blame can perpetuate feelings of helplessness, guilt, and self-loathing, deepening the trauma’s psychological wounds.
“These experiences undermine a person’s sense of identity and dignity, causing significant harm to their mental health and overall well-being. Recognizing and addressing the harmful effects of shaming is essential in preventing and healing from trauma caused by these experiences.”
I wrote in last week’s essay that I eventually ended up in a relationship with a scary whacko who was was great at playing the shame game. When I finally got away from him, I thought I’d shed most of my shame load. (I’m fairly certain there’s a category for shame loads on YouPorn!) However, I ended up in another relationship with someone who, after years of being kind and loving, ended up telling me a lot of terrible things about myself. He also told other people shitty things about me. When I learned that he’d kept our six-year relationship a secret from just about everyone who asked, I felt absolutely draped in shame.
However, this time, the shame has shifted and transmuted into something that feels almost righteous — and I have realized that the shame does not belong to me. It is not my shame that a man kept his relationship with me a secret while occupying the role of boyfriend in my life for all my friends and family to see. It isn’t my shame that he spun a tale to anyone who asked that I was a boozy, grief-stricken, traumatized lunatic who was obsessed with him. It’s not my shame that I got taken for a ride by someone who claimed to love me — it is his, and his alone.
This guy said that, when people asked him about me, he would (this is a quote!) “omit [my] struggles with grief and alcohol,” implying that somehow they were weaknesses of mine. Grief is not a moral failing. It is, arguably, a strength. It teaches you empathy, patience, and resilience. If you carry the weight of grief, you know that it is a reflection of the measure of love you held for the person you’re grieving.
Grief is not a moral failing. It is, arguably, a strength. It teaches you empathy, patience, and resilience.
I think that if I practice the kind of radical honesty that I believe is the way out of all this shit, and if I can talk to other hurt weirdos who are willing to meet me with radical honesty, I’m gonna be fine. Here’s the thing about radical honesty though: it’s not about being radically honest with other people. It’s about being radically honest with yourself. I’ve got a ton of shit that weighs me down. Sure, sometimes I drink a bunch of tequila grapefruits while playing pinball at a bar, or a bunch of wine at home while chain-smoking cigarettes and reading Vanity Fair, to forget my pain. I’ve been mostly buried under an avalanche of grief and shame for the last 19 years. But I can see now that neither my grief, nor my self-medicating with alcohol, or weed, or anything else, are things that I should be ashamed of. Today I’m being honest with myself about all of it, and I’m being kind to myself for the first time in forever.
My grief around the death of my incredible sister Caroline in 2021 may never go away, and that’s OK, because my love for her was, and is, immeasurable. I will also never get over the loss of Nicole — but I am getting bigger and bigger, so I can contain it all.
Before Nicole left Seattle for New York in October 2002, she came over to my place to say goodbye. She had a gift for me — a little amber-colored glass vase containing a paper scroll. “This is for whenever you can’t reach me, and you need to hear from me,” she told me, before she and her fiancé hopped in their Jeep with their two cats to hit the road. The morning after she died, I remembered her message in a bottle, and I pulled out the piece of paper that I hadn’t opened until that moment, when I needed to hear from her. It said:
Believe in yourself like I believe in you. Sending you lots of groovey love vibes. Have faith. Listen to yourself. With love, xo Nicole (10/02 towards NYC)
I’m burning the shame clean away with everything Nicole, and my sister Caroline, taught me. My Sandwich, My Choice is largely due to how Nicole inspired me when she was alive, and how she continues to inspire me.
I’m going to keep writing. I’m grateful to you, reader, if you’ve read this far.
More soon, with much love.
Mary Jane ❤️
Absolutely enraptured. Thank you for writing about real human sh*t, what matters, and what’s possible even after extreme hardship—so proud of you!!!
That was so helpful to read, MJ.
Relatedly, I feel so much shame every time I think about how drunk I got at her memorial in Seattle. Among other things.
I keep learning that grief isn't graceful. I've been judged for grieving my losses. Because I'm messy, I guess.
We don't talk about grief enough.