The Difference Between Healthy and Toxic Shame
Under The Eye of the Clock
Dear friend,
There’s one of those old fashioned alarm clocks in the kitchen here. The one’s that fold down into something that looks like a jewellery case. Mechanical, with glow in the dark hands, the second hand, a plain metal strip that ticks so loud it can keep you awake at night.
Probably the reason for it being in the kitchen where it competes with the sound of the air conditioning and the fridge and the spluttering coffee pot and our voices.
Not so much my voice as I am relatively silent in a country where my command of the language makes speaking feel something like tight rope walk with a custard pie in each hand. Bemused faces, lean in with a tilt of the head at my clumsy mix of Italian, often lapsing into jumbled French with the occasional smattering of Spanish.
I am trying though, not to fall back into English. It somehow feels disrespectful, even if it is a relief to be able to express myself without the custard pies flying in every direction.
The ticking of the clock reminded me of Christy Nolan’s book “Under The Eye of The Clock” which I read in my late teens while still living at home in Cumbria with Mam and Dad and Kevin and Chester our ginger tabby cat.
Sometimes a book with choose you.
It’s happened so often.
You’ll be in a library or a second hand store or book shop and a volume will jump off the shelf at you or a shaft of light will strike its spine. “Under the Eye of the Clock” was one of those for me. I don’t recall how it came to me, but it would’ve been a library find. That magical building on the corner of the street across from the bus station in town, smelling of paper and freedom. Quiet open minded people. A haven in which to unravel the expanses of life on this crazy planet.
Christy’s book changed my world. It may have been the first that held up a mirror to my ignorance, but will certainly not be the last.
It’s an autobiography told through a fictitious narrator, Joseph Meehan.
Christy’s body, due to injuries he suffered at birth, would not do his bidding. I’d never considered that the people in my community whos bodies did not function as my own were the same as me inside.
Wheelchair users, anyone with a physical challenge were in the category of ‘other’. It was as if they didn’t exist.
After meeting Christy in the pages of his book my eyes were opened and I’d see people talking to the person pushing the wheelchair about the person in the chair as if they didn’t exist or they were a child who could not speak for themselves.
What an incredible gift to be confronted with your own ignorance.
Uncomfortable and clear healthy shame cleaning out the muck of a prejudiced mind.
Healthy shame helps us grow.
One time early Saturday morning I was in town at the back of the dark sand stone offices of the local newspaper. I was there to hand in the bag of coins and notes collected from a paper round I’d make a few weeks each summer.
I used to cover for Janice, who lived two doors down when she was away at the caravan park for stop fortnight with her folks. She’d inherited the round from her elder brother Philip. You had to deliver the papers each afternoon, which was the easy part, and then collect the money by knocking on the doors once a week and asking, which was the hard part.
I was fairly relentless at collecting the money. Kids know when you’re lying and if I didn’t collect I didn’t get paid. I remember one woman lying about not having change, reporting me for rudeness when I pointed out that I could change any note she had in the house.
She eventually gave in and as I suspected coughed up the exact amount.
I loved the way the canvas cash bag filled up with coins and notes.
A percentage of it would be paid over to me by a shadowy man in the half lit musty newspaper office every Saturday morning. They paid you with coins and notes from your takings. The guy would count them out and put the coins into piles while he noted down the takings with a blue biro into a big marbled ledger.
He always took ages.
It was a different pace of life back then, in that place and time.
One morning, it was particularly hot. I couldn’t have been much more that twelve and was looking forward to getting my cash and getting down to shore with my friend Grahame. He had a paper round of his own, so we’d be both be good for cash for ice cream and fizzy drinks.
I locked my bike outside the paper offices and walked down the narrow alley that led to the backs. I was in my own little world, coins jingling and notes rustling eager to be done with the transaction and off into the wide blue open day.
As I turned the corner I was stunned by the sight a girl on the back steps. She’d a caste on her leg and was using crutches. She had the same canvas bag, swinging in one crutched hand and the other crutch was leaning against the steep office steps.
She was stuck and embarrassed, almost in tears of frustration trying to hop up into the office. She couldn’t quite reach the door to knock and alert the man to her presence.
I didn’t know what to do.
If she’d looked at me and asked me to help I think I might have feinted with joy. I’d never seen her before. Who knows how a twelve year old kid knows what league they are in, but I knew without anyone having to tell me, she was out of mine.
But she didn’t look at me or acknowledge I was there.
I just stood and watched her. Mind frozen, unable even to say hello.
She was wearing red shorts and a blue vest top and had her long fair hair tied back with a scrunchy. I never saw her face.
Eventually my brain came up with a plan of action.
I climbed the steps, careful not to touch or make eye contact, squeezed past her through the door and stood mutely while the guy went through his routine.
Finally I worked up the language to tell the guy about the girl on the steps, but by then she’d given up and the steps were empty.
I pushed the incident to the back of mind and headed over to Grahame’s house.
I didn’t tell him about the girl.
I never told anyone.
Except years later.
In my therapists office.
Learning the difference between healthy and toxic shame.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey