“I once read an interesting book, it said most people lost in the wild, they die of shame…”
-“The Edge”
There’s this Mamet film, “The Edge” that came out in the late 90s. I saw it in the theater and maybe a few times on television. I’m a big film person and moments, lines, scenes, energy from films stick with me, in my emotional DNA for years.
In the Edge, Anthony Hopkins character, a billionaire who finds himself stranded in the wilderness with Alec Baldwin and Harold Perrineau and hunted by a blood thirsty Kodiak Bear shares with them something he once read about people in their situation, that when they die, they usually die of “shame.”
I never understood it. I got that they were scared that they might never be found because no one even knew they were lost but I figured, at least they had each other and would find a way. But I get it now. And I’m not even lost in a literal wilderness unless my mind counts. He meant that when we’re scared enough, we can kill ourselves with shame before anything else finally finishes us off because we become so paralyzed with fear and a negative internal dialogue where were tell ourselves the worst things about why we’re in the situation we’re in, that we cannot act against real and immediate threats to our survival. We’re so ashamed of being lost in the first place that we die before we can be killed or create larger problems for ourselves than what might actually exist. Either way, we don’t move, we don’t act. We spiral.
I am spiraling. I am spiraling and I can’t seem to stop. I am spiraling and it is draining. I am spiraling and have allowed the spiral to rob me of joy, passion, curiosity, confidence…life.
My usual coping mechanisms aren’t coping. I’m on a ledge and have been for months. And the shame is very real. Overflowing into areas of my life that I thought I could protect. How long has it been since I last made an entry here? And this is where I’m at.
The details don’t matter. And I’m know I’m not alone. But that doesn’t matter either.
