Forget fear…Feel the guilt and do it anyway
I’ve been collecting orphans for 20 years. I wondered if this warrior would ever get over this addiction. Then it was as if every message and person and event around me conspired to sweep me up in a magic which would change all of that. I even remember about 10 days ago, alone here (I enjoy a lot of time alone) and was musing to myself about the saying ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’. Well, I’d been a phobic, a slave to fear, but dedicated my life to conquering that. Pulled out all the stops and declared that I would not stop for fear, I’d seize life regardless. But guilt, well guilt was a whole other beast. I’ve never known a worse guilt monster than me. I have medals for privation. I know what it is to feel too guilty to eat, to dare drink the water, to use a towel. I remember as a kid feeling guilty for breathing, for taking up too much space, for being so imperfect… sure, in between I was an oblivious, cheery dag, but suffice to say I had some great guilt foundations.
But I didn’t start out as the warrior. I started out as we all do. A doe eyed innocent, a child in a man’s world navigating homelessness and the streets. Those doe eyes became the desperate eyes of a perpetual orphan, the 13 year old street kid who would get drunk and vomit on herself for four years. The 15 year old with a plastic smile, smiling because it might help someone be helpful or kind. But by 17 that orphan had spent four years in domestic prostitution. She was street wise and weathered, jaded and ready to walk.
I walked my way to the shrink’s office and turned myself in and emerged a pilgrim, braving the streets because it was better to be cold and hungry than be someone’s toy, puppet or mule. And somewhere in there, after 10 years of being the orphan, the new pilgrim ultimately became the warrior.
I was the idealist, the rescuer and I collected every stray with greater and greater passion. Helping became the only version of love I felt and so, in time, I failed to notice anyone but the orphans and I seemed to pick the laziest of them, those who found the nests I’d make for them so cosy they’d refuse to seize the reigns in their own lives. Why should they? Clearly I liked hard work.
And they had their own love stories. For just as my version of love was to have someone to rescue and empower, theirs was to be the forever-baby, in whose world empowerment was self defeating.
So I sublimated along the way, creating like a walking collection of ARTism. And somewhere in there through painting, sculpture, music, poetry, books, films, musicals, I dredged up that old orphan and forgave her the shame I’d left her covered in. And somehow a magic happened. All the orphans I’d collected were no longer the means by which I could test out my own capacity for self forgiveness. I just ‘got over it’.
I realised orphans are ok, but being the only warrior in an army of orphans is not healthy and it was time to let some other guilt junkie define that as loving. I had learned better. Sure, I don’t know diddlee about how to love except to care for orphans. Maybe that’s something I’ve got to learn in this life. But I do know that I learned how to ‘feel the guilt and do it anyway’.  I’m over being the warrior. I’ve lost the romantic idealist and am firmly the pragmatist. If you’re not looking for empowerment don’t knock on my door. I don’t hold hands and I don’t wipe butts. I’ll be the first to point out your own magic, but from here on, I’m celebrating my own.
Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com
Lots to think and feel about as usual.
Alyson Bradley wrote a great column in the third issue of Voices and Choices about relationship entrapment, and Sheila Schoonmaker about relationships in general.
The six archetypes in the Conscious Living article are very interesting.
“Feel the (insert feeling here) and do it anyway is an empowering attitude. Also there is a poem which says: “Forgive anyway … love anyway” when there are all these obstacles and issues.
Then I thought about the fear of difference and change. How much fear can you (I) feel before being swept up in it/by it?
When I was eight years old and reading womens’ magazines, I found out about the Imago, which is your perfect image of a man or a woman that you love, all their traits and everything.
An example of the Innocent which moved me was The Blonde, which appears at the end of Sybil, and was the ‘last’ personality to appear before Sybil could integrate. She represented Sybil’s adolescence, and especially the feelings of love that she had for Ramon. When you say ‘that was a step up from being oblivious’ (that was in Somebody Somewhere) she had a first lover which wasn’t a lover. His name was Stan and he wrote her a ‘Dear John’ letter, and then Peggy Lou got angry.
Oh Bronwyn, you’re fab.
One thing I had to learn is that I am allowed to pick who I spend my time with. The moment I realized that, the guilt went away. Although in my case I didn’t so much seek out people as they would seek me out and demand things and I would feel guilty to say no. My life has gotten simpler since I learned that one simple thing.
happy new year Amanda. Yes, without narcissism, it doesn’t occur to a person they can actually discriminate or choose. And I know as a sort of puppet-child, a case-child, the idea I was a human in my own right and could socially choose, didn’t occur to me. I also saw all people as islands, that they drifted into each other’s realm and out again, and face blindness adds to that, so I didn’t understand they were working according to mind, emotions, choice. I felt mostly leaf in the wind until my mid 20s then I discovered self determination as lifestyle.