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Well helllllllllo, you entrepreneurial animal you. Monday it IS, and even though you’ve got a full inbox and a likely nostalgia for the weekend (mimosas on rooftops! flirting with ridiculously good-looking men! reading English-language books smuggled in from the United States!) we’ve got a killer Fear, Exposed segment today, written by the lovely Caroline McGraw of A Wish Come Clear, a site dedicated to providing support for those who have a relationship with someone with a disability via the art of storytelling.  Caroline is a brilliant writer, a passionista at heart (yes I make up words, and yes passionista so needs to be one), and one hell of a smart cookie. We had a strategy session this past week and I was blown away by her drive and determination; you know those kind of people that you just know are going places?  This girl is one of them, baby.  So saddle on up, grab another cup of ze coffee, and come along for ze ride. Unless, of course, the image of riding a horse while sipping on coffee conjures undesirable images of 3rd degree burns and some nasty bruising, in which case you should just pull up a chair and read it like a normal person. I suppose that’s okay, too. 

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Riding the bus to work this morning, I read this (from a poem entitled, “Love after Love” by Derek Walcott):

…You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart…

I averted my face so my seatmate wouldn’t see my tears. I was on my way to work on a typical Tuesday. I’d go to a meeting, do billing and paperwork, go more meetings and commute home. Nothing terrible. But nothing I was looking forward to, either.

I thought about an email I’d received that morning regarding a role-related training my supervisor recommended. I’d felt angry when I opened it, but at the time I didn’t know why. Now I understood: the training is an excellent fit for a program director. The problem is, the training isn’t an excellent fit for me.

No, this was not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. And yes, I realize how fortunate I am to have a ‘good’ job in a ‘bad’ economy. I have a good salary with benefits, the flexibility to work from home a few days a week, and a community that has loved and supported me and my husband for four years. Yet as I rode to work on Tuesday, I couldn’t deny that something was missing.

Part of this is Ash’s fault. The other day she tweeted: “What do you want to do? That’s the only question you need to answer.”

Doesn’t she know?! You can’t say that to people! It’s a dangerous, subversive question.

It’s a question that exposes my fear, because I do know what I want to do. What I must do. I know what my life needs more of for it to be totally, uniquely, passionately my life. I’ve known since I was a little girl. Of course, I went through the “I want to be a ballerina” phase. (I even went through the “I want to be a paleontologist” phase.) But what I’ve always known?

I want to be a writer.

In January I took a leap of faith and started A Wish Come Clear. Slowly but surely, I’m building my site. It’s hard to be patient and trust the process…but the work feels exactly right. It feels exactly like me.

Ash’s tweet was the kick in the pants I needed to move forward from there. This week, I began looking for freelance work – and, wonder of wonders, I’ve been hired already. I’m taking my first steps, and I have the same look on my face as a toddler who has just let go of the coffee table and stepped into the world. Boo-yah, baby. I’m walking.

It is terrifying to try for something I’ve wanted my whole life. Yet it’s also impossible to deny that this is my life, and it matters to me how I spend it. It’s moving swiftly by, perhaps more swiftly than I realize.

Case in point: my friend Allison was diagnosed with lymphoma last month. She’s 26. She just had a C-section to deliver her first baby…so that she can start chemo next week.

I keep thinking about her as I go about my day. I keep thinking about our last conversations, about our mutual desire to make a living from the things that give us life. For her, it’s music; for me, it’s words. When Allison gets through this, I don’t think she’s going to have any qualms about pursuing her music. With her in mind, I’m sticking to my posting schedule. With her in mind, I’m taking on freelance assignments. With her in mind, I’m submitting to Fear, Exposed though it makes me feel — shocker! — afraid. And exposed.

On that note, I keep thinking about these old, true words:

“Perfect love drives out fear.”

I used to think of that as a platitude, something people said to get others to calm down in a crisis. Now I see it as a fact of emotional physics: you can’t hold mature love and fear in the same internal space. That kind of love is spacious; it doesn’t leave enough room for fear beside it.

Lest I get too abstract, here’s what I associate with the phrase, Perfect love drives out fear. I think about the deli scene in When Harry met Sally. (You know the scene.) In case the details escape you, Sally is trying to prove a point to Harry: men don’t know when a woman is faking orgasm. To strengthen her case, she proceeds to get…well… orgasmic. Everyone in the deli is looking at them, mouths open, and Sally couldn’t care less. She’s totally in the moment. She’s completely into her portrayal of orgasm (real or fake.)

Though they’re in a public place, Sally is unafraid of other people’s reactions. Her motivation is, of course, to prove Harry wrong, but her acting proves a larger point: when you’re that intensely ‘in love’ – in a physical, emotional or spiritual sense—there comes a moment when it doesn’t matter who’s watching. Nothing matters but that love.

This is the same moment when you let go of the last of your fear. You become captivating, because you are totally captivated.

I realize that my interpretation of that scene is not the one the director intended. But I’m keeping it. Why? Because I’m falling in love with the person I’m growing into. I’m in love with every step I take in becoming that person…the person I’ve always been.

The poem, “Love after love” ends like this:

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

To you and your readers, Ash, I raise my glass. You’ve helped expose my fear for what it is: xenophobia.

I feared ‘the stranger who was [myself].’

Nevertheless, the same self that I kept turning away from seems to love me still.

And yes, absolutely…I’ll have what she’s having.

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Tags: a wish come clear, caroline mcgraw, fear exposed