Have you ever woken up with the lingering remnant of a once-forgotten memory? Usually it’s a repressed trauma, like an alien abduction or the knowledge that your middle name is Gaylord. In other words, they’re memories that require years of therapy to forget again. One day this repressed memory phenomenon happened to me. Only instead of waking up with the memory of tattooing happy and sad theater masks to my inner thighs, I suddenly remembered that I used to be a bully. A flood of childhood incidents came back to me, each more awful than the last, all of them changing my entire view of myself.
The effect was devastating. So devastating that I immediately purged all of my guilt into a mocha-fueled confession session on my Twitter account, as the Torah requires. Still, the guilt of all those bad acts lingered. According to the one-eyed gypsy I met at the carnival the other day, unless I use my shameful past for good, the guilt of being a bully will haunt me forever. And also my ears will turn to frogs by midnight tonight. So I’m turning my shame into wisdom for all of you. Read more…
