storyteller.
“Over the weekend when I was visiting home in rural southern Indiana, I drove the usual path to my house. I saw Trump yard signs, painted messages on plywood, and Trump 2016 flags hung up on flag poles; there was not a single sign supporting Hillary Clinton.
Election Day. I woke up on election day with a nervous pit in my stomach. After more than a year of contentious debate, of divisive and ugly rhetoric, we had reached the day of conclusion. My optimism, as always, was stubborn, and I worked to channel my nervous energy into hope, suggestions of empathy. I wondered, for a moment, how my nieces would react at learning of a female President.
We speak of courage like it’s an innate trait, a characteristic belonging to some, but certainly not all, of us. It’s not like this at all, in my experience. I’ve been cowardly, and I’ve been courageous. They start the same.
This week, the United States will elect a new President. It is no secret that the path to this election has been among the most contentious and ill-spirited in recent history, and our nation feels more divided than ever. I see this – the gap of understanding between people on both ‘sides’ – each day as I work and live among a college campus. Some of my students have Donald Trump cutouts in their windows, pointing at me and grinning as I walk to grab coffee, and others scoff at the mention of his name. With students on all sides of the issue, in an increasingly hostile political environment, I find myself bracing for the results. Where will we be once the President is announced? How can we possibly find our way back together?
Yesterday, amidst a busy day, one of my students popped into my office and asked if she could hang out while I worked. She told me that my presence calms her, and I returned the sentiment. She slumped onto the couch, and I stood at my desk, typing a meeting agenda from the notes in my head. ‘I found a quote that made me think of you,’ she said. I braced, glancing up.
‘Yeah?’ I said.
When you’re deeply sensitive, love is ecstasy. Music is godlike. Heartache is a wide, somatic wound. Visual natural beauty is jewel-drenched, wild bliss. Tension and conflict are muscle-tightening and toxic, straight down to the cells.
I met the morning slowly, pulling my second pillow up and stacking it so as to prop my neck up. An episode and a half of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Season 3. The first fall of Carmen Carrera, a major hit to ‘the Heathers.’ Gradually, the laziness grew stifling. Get up, I urged myself. With reluctance, I listened.
I waited a bit too long to run, only 45 minutes or so away from lunch plans, but I put my headphones in anyway. I jogged around campus, the sun overhead, the breeze gracious. Backwards cap, blue dri-fit shirt. Why didn’t you meet that guy who hit you up this morning, I wondered. Maybe you’re just going to be alone for a while.
There are three questions I’ve gotten, often, since getting a tattoo. Here are my answers:
Sometimes the story we tell the world isn’t half as endearing as the one that lives inside us.
I read this quote today in Scary Close, a book lent by a friend. I’m only three chapters in, so I’ll resist expanding much on its content for now, but I’ll say that it is already opening doors and windows within me.
After reading this quote, I felt worried I share only the highlights of my life. Only the moments of strength, bits of wisdom and clarity, and that I resist lifting up my pain. Perhaps my best stories are locked away, kept carefully hidden so that I might be worthy of love.
So here’s something honest. Here’s something I wrote on a hard morning, through a wall of tears, as I tried to make sense of the mess.
This summer, in New York City, I read a bit prolifically. I read The Gilded Razor, Sarah Silverman’s autobiography, and the ending pages of Love May Fail. As I sat on the train, reading these, I noticed a common novel in people’s hands: Ready Player One. One morning, following breakfast with my friend Phil, we traveled to McNally Jackson. There, I picked up my own copy.
the year of the breaking, first apart and then through. the year of words can’t restore everything, the limits of linguistics. the year of a thousand settings, but only now just venturing out of my head. of miles and miles of running, of hustling, for someone who walked away. the year of forgiveness, of letting go of heavy things to make room in my fingertips for the breeze. the year of learning things the hard way, that a person’s selfishness cannot be loved away, that my own brokenness was never anyone else’s to heal. the year of finding my strength in my shattered pieces, in my willingness to sit with my pain and study it and feel alive with it. the year of new horizons, of the courage to try again. the year of being brave, of working courage into a verb, of couraging. the year of discovery, this magic, was it here all along? the year of love, when it matters most, when it’s not easy, to everyone I have loved or will love. the year of searching for starlight.
michael king 