Shame

Shame is almost a pretty sounding word, like serendipity or quintessential, but it's an ugly feeling, and I don't think I really knew its meaning until this year. Shame, I now know (try to write that, while marginally drunk, at 2:45am, by the way, it really wants to come out 'I know now'), is having to answer questions like "have you recently turned to drugs or alcohol" and "what kinds of feelings are negative feelings" from a marriage counselor. Me? Turn to alcohol? And please, who doesn't think anger, sadness, and anxiety are negative feelings? But that gave the Steve Martin therapist with the child molester mustache much fodder for note-taking, at $2 a minute. Clearly, thinking some feelings are negative is a big red flag. And so, I have renamed our therapy as "wife failure class," and hereby resolve to do better, although I'm still a little unclear about what that entails, exactly. Probably, to be honest, not going out drinking and dancing until after 2am the night before the kids meet their teachers.