I still cringe when I think of that moment.
Briefly, the same feelings of shame, embarrassment, and utter unworthiness flash through me like a lightning bolt. I can feel it like it was yesterday, but it happened more than forty years ago.
The entire middle school experience, starting with the locker incident, built my wall of negative self-talk brick-by-brick, stacking one embarrassing moment on top of another. You can probably find yourself in some of these other moments.
My assigned square dancing partner in middle school gym class (yes, square dancing in gym class) looked at me with disgust and then asked the teacher for a new partner.
Getting rejected by someone that I asked to a dance specifically because her friend told me she’d say “yes.” It was really just a plot to make fun of me.
Being greeted by a table of “big guys” laughing at me in the lunch room because one of them had struck me out the prior evening.
Those bricks built up the wall that became my inner monologue of unworthiness. But that inner monologue is just a story, or rather, a collection of stories. I probably don’t even remember the facts correctly. I may have fabricated or conflated entire episodes. However, I remember the feelings. And that’s what our stories are about — feelings.
Whether our story is filled with facts or fabrications, we always bring that inner monologue with us no matter how, where, or with whom we show up in the world.
