I carry with me the sorrow of friends who are survivors of sexual violence. And I mean in my own small way: I suspect a dull echo compared to what they carry. In the first few years after sitting with them, literally, and I hope empathetically, in parking lots or on AOL Instant Messenger, listening to them, feeling their sobs through my hand on their backs, it was a heavier weight. I recall having to leave a dorm where my girlfriend was holding a prayer for a friend of hers who was raped by her boyfriend. I walked to marsh I often escaped to, and I cried and shouted and threw chunks of ice for my friends, and this girl I didn’t know.

When news like the Cornell rape comes to the public forefront, it’s very easy for that empathetic grief to return. It’s right there behind my eyes. It’s an ache in a storm.

Twenty years on, I also think of the grief I have for my own sexual self. The guilt I felt for being related to the rapists and molesters by way of a chromosome found a powerful but toxic partnership in the sexual shame bequeathed by my prudish religious upbringing. It took me years to “come out” as a straight man, to own my sexuality.

(I appropriate that phrase, “coming out,” with honor; in my twenties I saw my gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and queer friends, family, acquaintances, lovers, mentors, and public figures claim their identities, and in doing so, take ownership for their sexuality, and I saw the power in that, and I followed their example.)

The shame and guilt are right there along with the grief, old wounds that smart when the weather changes.

The same religious upbringing that taught me to feel shame about my desires and the biology of my body, also taught me that only the sinless can throw stones. It has me pausing, before I pass judgement on those 7 men, to pull the plank from my eye. I have to confront my behavior, too.

In that decade between puberty and taking ownership of my sexuality, I was an awkward, awful “nice guy.” Because I had not yet claimed my identity, I acted as if someone else would give it to me. Because I was afraid and ashamed of my desires, I wasn’t willing to communicate them, and I expected others to hold them for me.

These are dangerous attitudes. And they led to actions I am and should be ashamed of (the healthy kind of shame): somewhat forceful making out and snuggling with friends, even with consent; failing to communicate my intent with respect before and after sexual interactions–in other words using women, sometimes for an emotional, sometimes for a physical exchange, without honoring their feelings; even just the feeling of being entitled to more access, whether or emotional of physical, because of my “good behavior,” and sometimes being emotionally or physically imposing when I didn’t get that access; giving so much unwanted attention, and continuing after it had been gently declined–gently, maybe because they wanted to keep my friendship, andbutyet always for their own safety.

It could have gone a lot worse–I could have been a lot worse. Thankfully, I continued to listen, to empathize.

I like to think that in my 30s I did a lot of work to address this part of me. And, I did–I really tried to eat my shadow, and I think I was somewhat successful to grab the heat of my heterosexuality and honor it with all its danger and pride.

But like all wounds, the shame stays with me. And I see, in this Year of Separation, that the shame of divorce has some of these old wounded ways returning, and need to be re-addressed. Like all wounds, my work in healing will never be completely done. I’ll always be in recovery.