shame memories

The year is 2012.

It's a bit before 3:40. I'm in my room facing the window sitting at my desk.

I'm thinking about a time in 2006 around Late December (or was it august). I'm out with my friends, we have gone to a club in Kingston upon Thames. A bit far out of my usual area. There are lots of people around our age and a little younger. I am drinking a bit. I'm pretending to have a good time but I feel my inner sense of misery ruin the experience. I feel uncomfortable, nausea. I remember a girl trying to hit on my friend, she proceeds to kiss a stranger, another girl, as a way of arousing him. Both are not interested in each other, both just want to arouse him, one just wants to be seen kissing another girl.

Later on in the night one of the guys abandons me to hang out with some girls. I end up going home by myself, I lose my pen somewhere and I tell security. They tell me to fuck off. I say how its a fischer space pen and it was special to me. It was the silver bullet design. The security man was unsympathetic and threatening. I remember it vividly. I'm remembering it now, almost 6 years on, and I don't know why. I like to focus on the horrid moments of my life. The times when I feel uncomfortable, unhappy, it seems so absolute. So absolute that it infects my time now, years on.

Memories like that make me feel vulnerable. Memories like that make me pretend certain things don't happen. I remember reading somewhere that there is a difference between shame and embarrassment. Embarrassment has the distinction of being public, or viewable to others. Shame lingers. Shame is the kind of thing you can pretend isn't there when other people are around. Shame has a way of emerging after hiding.