THE EXPERIENCE PROJECT HELPED TO PUBLICLY SPOTLIGHT MY GREATEST SHAME.
I feel very grateful to the Experience Project. It is because of EP that I was able to finally open about years of shame – that I began to be regularly spanked by my stepdad on my bare bottom when I was a teenager.
I was 16 and in 10th grade when my stepdad, because of what he perceived to be my ‘impertinent’ attitude, arguing, disrespect, sassing back, poor behavior, mediocre grades, wearing clothing or swimwear deemed too tight or too revealing, often breaking curfew and engaging in quite a lot of shall I just call it ‘extracurricular activity’ with numerous boyfriends, decided from then on my punishment would be a bare-bottom spanking in the family living room – no matter who was present – and that included my brothers, their friends, extended family, even younger boys I routinely babysat. Needless to say, my remaining teen years were quite humbling indeed. My embarrassment and my shame was intense and for years I couldn’t talk about it except to my most dearest friends.
The Experience Project helped me to go public and to put a spotlight on my shame. Yes, it meant additional humiliation, being ridiculed and laughed at not only by total strangers but by dozens and dozens of acquaintances, ranging from extended family to people whom I barely knew. They had now read in my own words about my embarrassing spankings and my misbehavior that led to them. For those than had know or seen me spanked some now knew even more details than before.
It was now all out there. The intense shame I felt when my panties were lowered in front of my younger brother, extended family or mere acquaintances who then watched me get spanked and stand bare in the corner afterwards. How even friends of my parents who were marriage counselors recommended I be spanked. Details about my feelings during my mom’s divorce from my stepdad. My misbehavior as a teenager, ranging from mere disobedience and the occasional poor grade to getting caught naked while sex with a boyfriend in his car in a school parking lot. Having to completely undress for a social worker to be rightfully examined for signs of physical abuse, only to look up and suddenly realize while my naked body was being inspected by her that my younger brother and his friend (a boy from across the street who I occasionally babysat) had been watching wide-eyed the whole time from the stairway. Or when my mom had photos taken of me fully exposed head-to-toe with a reddened bare bottom a day after one particularly harsh spanking from my stepdad that attorneys on both sides, the mediator and the judge would all eventually have to look at with me present and embarrassed. How my mom and I accused my stepdad of physically abusing me in that we felt the spankings were “excessive.” How the judge didn’t think they were – and said so. How the judge also then shot down mine and my mom’s request that my stepdad be barred from spanking me during further so-called “visitations” because he opinioned that “sometimes the best thing for a rebellious teenage girl is to get some good, solid spankings” on her bottom. It was now like everyone I knew had been handed a copy of my diary and without me knowing who had read it. The grins, the smirks, the stares, the looks of disapproval. I could only now guess what they knew, how much they knew or whether by knowing what they knew if that had changed their opinions of me.
As a teen, I was grateful for each person who DIDN’T know I got spanked. I felt fortunate at the time that no one at my high school knew except my closest friends. Yes, a number of extended family, some neighbors and close family friends either saw or knew I got spanked, but at least not everyone I knew. But, ironically, baring my soul on EP helped me to belatedly earn some of the shame I had avoided from those who hadn’t known the method of my being disciplined over my stepdad’s lap. After all, I had no right for people NOT to know when I had misbehaved and got punished. After all, my stepdad sure didn’t care who saw me crying like a preschooler with my bottom bared during a spanking.
In fact, in hindsight, perhaps it would have been better for me if EVERYONE had known at the time or, better yet, SAW ME being bared and punished. Maybe someone would have eventually talked some sense into my stepdad if I was routinely spanked in front of a large family gatherings. Or if he came to my high school and spanked me there in front of my teacher and classmates, just like the shame one particular teenage high school girl at Cudahy High School in Cudahy, Wisconsin about that time had suffered, her father spanking her with her bottom facing her entire biology class. But now I was IN ALL FAIRNESS forced to accept that those maybe’s went hand in hand with the fact that many people who hadn’t known I was spanked ended up approving that I was, too.
I had become the beneficiary of additional shame that had merely been delayed by six years. Shame that I perhaps had no right to hide from anyway, just as I couldn’t hide from the shame of those who witnessed me being disciplined.
On many occasions it has forced me without warning to have to talk frankly face-to-face to others about my disciplinary spankings, my soul literally being bared on the spot, often to the amusement of others who happened to eavesdrop. From some, I received empathy. To others, some who may have heard rumors in the past and disapproved about my various misbehaviors and sexual encounters with quite a number of boys in high school, it only validated their opinions of me and their belief that I was in need of strong discipline. And some people weren’t the least bit shy about telling me so now that they knew that I knew that they knew. And maybe that was the point. To those whom I had avoiding facing my shame, I now had no choice but to acknowledge all of it.
I still feel deeply ashamed, both of how I was punished and for some of my own actions that led to me being disciplined. But at least now my shame is no longer something I try to deny or hide from.
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https://similarworlds.com/social/experience-project/31298-SPOTLIGHTING-MY-GREATEST-SHAME-I-feel-very
