72 Days to Ultraman Mexico

72 Days to Ultraman Mexico — Shame, Hurt, and the Illusion of Separation

I finished Baby Reindeer with Renee tonight. It was a hard show to watch—raw, unflinching, full of walking trauma and the long consequences of shame and self-denial. Both of us felt the weight of it, not because we’d lived anything identical, but because shame is universal.

Afterward, we talked. Stories from childhood through adulthood surfaced. The show opened the door. What struck me most was that his real catharsis didn’t come from going viral online. It came when he finally told the truth directly to his parents. Only then was he integrated. Only then could he feel happiness, even pleasure. His appearance changed. His whole being shifted.

It makes me wonder: is it the fear of how our loved ones will see us that keeps shame locked away? We want to be fully known, but we’re terrified that being known will mean rejection. So we keep the poison inside. Yet paradoxically, it’s the exposure itself—the willingness to be seen—that frees us to be loved.

Krishnamurti talks about this. He says identity itself is a form of separation, and that separation is the root of hurt. From hurt comes violence, division, and disorder. Healing begins with perceiving and accepting hurt—not in isolation, but with others. That is what dissolves the barriers between us.

In Baby Reindeer, he takes that first step—exposing his shame, reconnecting with his parents—but he doesn’t go all the way. He never really investigates the deeper wound beneath the drug use, the violent sex, the obsession, the degradation. He heals the surface, but he returns to the same foundation of hurt he started from. His parents, too, are hurt—his mother doting but overly soft, his father temperamental and tough. His father even shares his own history of sexual assault. The family feels closer in the end, but the years of separation remain.

This is the cycle: endless generations of unspoken hurt rippling outward through families, communities, societies. It seems almost like the origin story of the modern world. Everyone carries hurt. Everyone is separated from themselves, and therefore from everyone else.

For most of my life, I’ve sensed this. The chaos and confusion of the world always felt rooted in misunderstanding. My response was to turn inward—analyze, improve, “fix” myself—because the world’s problems felt too vast to touch. I thought the best I could do was work on me and hope that somehow it would ripple outward.

But that thinking carries its own flaw: it reinforces separation. It assumes I am one thing, and the world is another. Krishnamurti cuts through that illusion: you are the world, and the world is you.

At first, I struggled with this. I wanted proof, logic, a way to support it. But maybe it’s self-evident. Existence is one whole. Everything is made of the same material. Nothing can be removed from existence without changing it entirely. To imagine otherwise is a trick of thought.

So yes—I am the world, and the world is me. Which means that healing myself is not some separate project from healing life. It is healing life. It is healing existence.