It's Not Sunday Anymore

I've been thinking today about the difference between "shame" and "guilt" and which actions can cause such reactive feelings. I've also been pondering HOW these feel. Can someone experience one without a trace of the other? Which one am I grappling with? Both?

Sometimes, to me, having to take a shit feels a little bit like fear. I mean, the physical sensation.

What causes the lump in the throat when one is about to bawl? Why does the chin quiver and the voice shake? What sense is it, when listening to someone talk, and they suddenly pause, and wait, (right before their voice gets thick) snaps the listener to attention? The one talking automatically seems ten times more interesting than they did a few mere moments ago.

A passage in the book I've been meandering through for months (I plowed through about three others while this one has been on deck) keeps running in my mind.

"When the heart breaks, it splits like timber, down the full length of the plank. In the first days at the sawmill he had seen Gustaf Olsson take a piece of the solid timber, drive in a wedge, and give the wedge a little twist. The timber broke down the grain, from end to end. That was all you needed to know about the heart: where the grain lay. Then with a twist, with a gesture, with a word, you could destroy it."

Heavy.

In the past couple months, I've pulled out my leather Daytimer I used to fill up with important and exciting events and happenings and phone numbers. Here, it's generally used to look up an address I want to send a package or a letter to back home. However, these past few times I've called numbers on the inside, hoping to reach out to friends I haven't talked to in years.

I got through to three of them, and our conversations started the same way: "Holy expletive," followed by my last name question mark.

I don't know why, but hearing them call me by my family name pleased me very very much.