V. H. King's Ink

Once upon a time, my goal in life was to have a stable job to pay for housing, food, and the means to write and paint whatever I wanted. For a little while, I almost managed something like that. The stable job wrecked my capacity to write and paint very often, but I had to have the job before I could do any of the fun things, right?

Well, my health had other plans.

Call me stubborn or determined or any number of names, but I refused to walk away from my art and writing. It is the only way I know how to honor my BlackDisabledQueer livelihood. The joy, the hurt, the hope, the faith. With the world as it is, repeating the hate and harm that has always been here, writing and art let me live, breathe, dream.

I wouldn’t say I’ve “fully recovered” from surgery. Both words between those quotation marks just don’t cut it. My illnesses aren’t something from which I can recover, and yet the severity of my disability is called into question every eighteen months. No, I can’t work. It takes all my energy to eat a meal and a half every day; to wash dishes once a week; to cook occasionally; to do my laundry twice a month.

From the beginning, I knew this would be the case. I knew I couldn’t put in hours at the computer, or at my art table. It takes as much energy to put one word as it does to put one foot, right after, or in front of, the other. How, then, am I supposed to share the stories I’ve worked on? How do I write anything new? Sometimes, drawing goes a little easier—because it’s just lines, right? Shapes and curves?

But then comes the issue of colors, and I find myself floundering again. I don’t have an explanation for it, or even a good description. All I know is that sometimes my brain has as much trouble processing colors as it does reading a paragraph. Who knew that my connection to those things that had always let me feel and say whatever I needed to would one day be severed?

It’s not all gone.

Not yet, anyway.

Some days, most days, are harder than others. “Since you don’t have to work, now you can read and write and draw to your heart’s content!” Not true. I do still have to work, and it is very hard work, to give my body the food and rest it needs. It takes great effort to manage my mental health—and although writing and art are two ways in which I have done this in the past, I cannot make these the focal point of my life at the expense of literally feeding my body.

I miss writing short stories. I miss being able to compose poems with ease. I miss knowing the shape of things, and being able to trust that my pencil and my spirit would move in sync to bring out what I needed to see. I miss sinking into the music as I read, as I write, as I sketch, as I paint.

All these things can still happen, but not with ease. It is never effortless and always exhausting. So why continue? Contrary to my contemporaries, I don’t want to play the hustle-and-grind game. Whether it’s meeting a publisher’s deadlines or chasing engagement or fighting an ever-changing algorithm—I don’t want that for myself. Maybe one day I’ll have whatever it takes to do those things, if I have to, but I don’t know if I’ll ever want to.

How do I expect to reach, find, build an audience? Well…I kind of don’t. I have an ambivalent relationship with sharing my writing, but I keep doing it. When I published Late in the Midnight Hour, I knew the importance of showing up as my full self. I declared that I would be present: with my anger, with my heartache, with my uncertainty. Those things haven’t changed. My pace of life, however, requires a constant unlearning, a careful relistening, a gentle unraveling.

With summer on its way, I hope for long hours painting in the afternoon sun. I have been afforded at least three painting sessions so far, and I am deeply grateful for the chance to reach back into myself, to remember how I sound, to know the reflection of my artistry.

Lately it’s been easier to daydream about my artwork, and I’ve allowed myself to take comfort in it while waiting for my words. I don’t know if they will come back. I am afraid to say that I’m afraid they won’t. I don’t want to admit to the possibility that all these stories will always be incomplete. I hate the self-repulsion, the dread of failure, and the deeper fear that it is too late.

I have to sit with all of those things, though. I face them in turn, and I ask myself if I can keep going anyway. Sometimes, most times, I don’t have an answer. But every now and then, I dare.