I sometimes behave in ways that perpetuate the shame underlying the self-hate, as if it is so much a part of my identity that I have to keep it going in order to know who I am. It feels like in order to reverse this self-hatred I have to begin to live in a different universe entirely, not the world I grew up in. No wonder, I guess, that I get so scared. Sometimes it is just plain disorienting when I do get a glimpse of another way of feeling about myself. It also means acknowledging the wrongness of how I was treated, and that means feeling a lot of pain. I can be a big old chicken when it comes to that.