I don't feel shame

Shame, as defined by Merriam-Webster: a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety. Shame is a funny thing to me, mostly because I don’t think I experience it all that much. The lack of it is so great that I cannot, honestly cannot, remember the last time I felt it. And sometimes I don’t really know how to feel about that. Obviously it’s not a bad thing. I have confidence in myself and my actions and my identity. But I do wonder why on earth my emotions have played out in this way. I have a feeling that it’s because I’ve existed for years as an overactive defense mechanism. I was so at odds with the world around me, too quiet, too sincere, too strange in my tastes, too judgemental, too angry, that I had to defend who I was and my choices constantly. I couldn’t just be how I wanted; I had to have a reason that made sense too. Sometimes I did have to defend myself to others, but a lot of the time I was defending myself to myself, which is an odd thing…