Talk About Something You Did That Made You Feel Ashamed Of Yourself Afterwards.

Shame noun: 1. (a) a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace. (b) Capacity for such a feeling: Have you no shame? 2. One that brings dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation. 3. A condition of disgrace or dishonor; ignominy. 4. A great disappointment.

It's kind of funny, I think everything I've ever done in my life that didn't meet up to my father's standards started me in on this thing we call shame. A disappointment, I was the brightest student in med school, one of the youngest surgeons on staff and it was never enough. I was never enough and after a while I started to resent him and my mother because all she ever did was show him newer, crueler ways to emphasize his disappointment.

"It's a shame about your divorce Jack."

So all in all my life was filled with shame; I don't know how much of it I actually felt towards my own actions. I wasn't ashamed that I got a 99 on a test and not a 100, I wasn't ashamed of things that my father seemed to think I should be.

But do I know shame? Am I ashamed? There are too many things to count, my marriage fell apart and I have no idea why. I think if I sat down and thought about it maybe I could find the reason, like it should be obvious to me, but honestly I don't want to do that.

My father died in Australia, he drank himself to death and my mother had sent me there to find him because he was off on another one of his benders. After what I did, this is what my mother said. Yeah, for all intensive purposes I cost my father his career but he cost it, not me, he chose to go into surgery after drinking, not me. I'm not going to blame myself anymore for that. Yet I went after him, out of guilt.

He died and I had to do everything, alone in Australia I had to make the arrangements. I needed it to be done, I needed to take him home and burry him. I needed it to be over and done with and I needed to go on with my life. I had to stop thinking about why he was there, I had to block out my mother's voice over the phone and that tone, and she blamed me. He blamed me; it was always my fault, everything that went wrong in their lives I was the cause of. I'm not trying to gather sympathy here, it's my life and I've dealt with it long enough.

I just needed it to be done; the hearse was going to be waiting at LAX and going straight to the cemetery. It was all planned out in advance, only I couldn't get past customs. There was a problem with the documentation and they weren't going to let my father's corpse on the plane.

I don't know what possessed me to leave him behind. I think I just had to have it done; I had to get on that plane and go back to living. Maybe that's callous or maybe it's what anyone would have done in my position. Funny that all I wanted was for it to be done and now? Now it never will be and I'm ashamed that I left my father behind, dead or not. Just because he would have done it to me, I shouldn't have done it to him; I'm not him.

note: I know there are differing opinions on what actually happened to Christian Sheppard's body. Some people believe his body was taken or eaten (ew) but I made the assumption from White Rabbit that Jack actually left the body in Australia. I could be wrong, but it's my interpretation so I'm going with it.