On Thriver’s Guilt.
On Thriver’s Guilt.
I’ve been trying to put into words why, how, I’m feeling what I’m feeling.
I’ve been trying to put into words what I’m feeling, and why I might be feeling that way.
In my body, it’s a heaviness. A pain that’s not my own. A sense of despair at the world. And a deep, deep sorrow.
It’s not just white guilt. It’s survivors’ guilt. It’s thrivers’ guilt.
It’s how can I look at myself in the mirror and sit with myself and forgive myself and smile and laugh and joke when all of this is going on? It is wrong. It is just wrong. The world is burning in more ways than one.
And I don’t know how to reconcile this with my own part in it.
And I don’t want to make it about me, because it isn’t about me. This is not my pain. And yet, it genuinely hurts to experience, even if only vicariously. And I am angry and I am sad and I resolve to do better and I am doing better and yet it isn’t enough. Because of course it isn’t enough. Because I can’t hold myself accountable for something that I am not wholly responsible for.
We live day to day. I am smiling with a vengeance. I am calling out well-intentioned but ill-informed diversity business case BS. I am having lengthy uncomfortable conversations with loved ones who, try as I might, won’t budge from their positions. I am challenging myself. I am questioning myself. I am putting my money where my mouth is. And yet, it isn’t enough. Through it all, White Saviour Complex comes through, implicit — but I cannot fix this. In more ways than one, I simultaneously just have to sit with it and do something about it. Cognitive dissonance is draining.
And yet I feel ashamed even writing this. This entire article defeats the object. This is not about me. This is not about me at all. And I am angry with myself for making it so. I am angry with myself for being, for having, a self. A mind, a heart, a soul. And I don’t know how to move on or move forward.
I am determined that this will not break me, that this will not break us. We need radical change to combat systematic oppression. I hold onto hope that this is, will be, the making of us, because I have to. Because what else do we have? And yet I do so from the privileged standpoint of not being part of the affected demographic. I don’t ‘need’ to worry. I don’t ‘need’ to be afraid. In relative terms, I am, have been and will always be okay. And maybe a small, masochistic part of me wishes I wasn’t.
I wonder whether this is particularly powerful and painful for me because it reminds me of being unwell. Of slamming my head against walls again and again and again in a desperate plea to make my pain visible. To show the world how ugly I felt and what was going on inside. To disgust others as much as I disgusted myself. To shame myself. To degrade myself.
I feel so, so sad for that little girl.
But I sit with her, and I comfort her, and I love her. And I wouldn’t be who I am today without her. And I can hold her and hear her and soothe her. She doesn’t have to be alone anymore. And I have hope that we will heal.
#inthetrencheswithyou