For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-517-5-minute-freewrite-thursday-prompt-hammer
Boom goes the hammer as it pounds and pounds.
All the fearsome worries pound inside my head. I don't voice them for fear of making them real. Will they be less real if I don't tell you them? I was watching John Oliver, and he suggested that we imagine what it's like if not only did everyone know the most embarrassing thing we'd ever done, but mentioned it constantly.
Constantly.
And that reassured me, oddly. Because I do that to myself already. My brain tries to remind me of all the worst things I've done as often as it can. It's very exhausting and it hurts. When he said that, and said it as if it's something that no one should be subjected to, because it hurts and isn't useful, it felt better. Like he had given me permission to stop raking myself over the coals.
I know my circumstance, of my own brain raking me over the coals, isn't comparable to the public shaming that he talked about. For the most part, no one has ever publicly shamed me. Not like that.
But still, it is a relief to know that John Oliver also doesn't think I SHOULD be publicly shamed.
Whew.