V. H. King's Ink

To my utter chagrin, I hadn’t thought about the BUTTER Fine Art Fair until after the 4th of July. My cousin had asked my mom, who asked me, and my first thought was Oh shit how could I have possibly forgotten about this?! I’d taken a break from social media, for most of the summer, but there’s no guarantees the algorithms would have waltzed posts about BUTTER past my feed anyway. 

I quickly searched, sent links to tickets, and began several weeks of obsessively checking for the daily schedule. Once it was posted, I spent the next few weeks in nervous excitement, in wiggly anticipation. Internally screaming the whole time but with one thing certain in my mind:

I had to be there! 

Due to my parents’ schedules, I’d be going by myself—for the most part. My cousin would be there on Saturday, but I was going for two days instead of one. My plan? I would have my water bottle and my snacks and set up shop in the conversation corner. I was hungry for advice, for wisdom, for the reminder that Black voices are beautiful, powerful, formidable.

Vast and valiant and vibrant

I needed to be there. 

Across from the BUTTER shop, a giant sign reads: You Can be Yourself Here. When I passed that sign last year, I wasn’t so sure. Could I really be myself? I’d spent my whole life feeling like I wasn’t Black enough, hating the way it felt like a performance for others who actually didn’t give a shit about my lived experience and just wanted me to match their assumptions. How could I, an autistic queer in a powerchair who couldn’t go anywhere without their parents, be myself?! 

Well, turns out I could go places without my parents. I’d gotten a fair bit of unexpected practice at it this year, between an author fair in April and an impulse birthday adventure downtown to see Beetlejuice the Musical (the musical, the musical).  I still had my powerchair, and the autism, and queerness, and everything else that made me a weird-ass kid. But I had something else, too.

About a month before I went to BUTTER, someone told me they appreciated my writing. They thanked me for sharing my poems—and, naturally, my first response was to hide under a blanket. One of the easiest ways to keep myself from chickening out of putting my writing out there is by telling myself to assume that no one will see it, and that if anyone does see it, I probably won’t meet them. I wouldn’t have a conversation about it. 

Let it reach whoever, however it will, is what I tell myself. Your job is to make sure it exists.

I have to keep a tight, narrow focus on the immediate task at hand, or else I will drown in the toxic vat of self-doubt. The criticism in my head reaches Gotham City levels of villainy, if I’m not careful. It’s exhausting, and until recently, I didn’t realize how helpful it was to hear someone say…thank you. 

Most of my creative endeavors seemed to be in a void, a vacuum. Even when I had people encouraging me, I didn’t know what I needed to know in order to do things “right” and I didn’t have anyone to ask. I’ve pivoted several times since the last time I told myself I would put my writing out there. That was five years ago, and it feels like I’ve been fantastic at false starts and fumbles and failure. I wasn’t going to give it up, though. I just didn’t know how to keep going, and then I wasn’t sure if I could keep going. But that’s the thing I always have to remind myself of—

There are no guarantees one way or the other, so you might as well try.

While I wasn’t sure what all BUTTER would hold for me this year, I knew I had to be there. And when artists and writers shared words that moved me, I made sure to say thank you. Shyly, at first. Shaking on the inside. Stimming on the outside. Avoiding eye contact while my anxiety screamed at me for not being normal. But I said it, and I meant it, and people heard it. 

I’ve never been good at being myself because I was always told, subtly or overtly, that I was doing it wrong. And yet, I’ve only ever been myself. I know my own experiences, and whatever it is that I am, it’s how I’m made to be. As I scribbled notes in the conversation corner and soaked up every pixel and brush stroke and collage and sculpture and stitched seam that I possibly could, over my two days at BUTTER, I was surrounded by a whole lot of wordless song that caught my spirit. It pulled me right into my body, anchoring me in sacred truths. 

I am here. I am part of this. I am participating in this moment of history, and I will carry it with me. 

It wasn’t just that I could be myself at BUTTER. I needed to be. I needed to take that step of being seen for who I am. I needed to give people a chance to meet me. I needed to discover—to my utter surprise—that I could have fun with this. I can be shy and take small steps. I can be bold and chance bigger risks. 

And when the weekend is over and I am left drained and unmoored, adrift in the brain fog and fatigue of overexertion for the next two and a half weeks, I can miss my usual deadlines. I can be scattered. I can be annoyed while waiting for any shred of capacity or focus or clarity to come back to me. 

Because that is also being myself. And in order to grow into myself a little more, in order to pass on the kindnesses that had been shown to me, in order to celebrate my ancestry and artistry along with others doing the same thing—I had to be there.

I had to be myself, and find out just how powerful that could be.