V. H. King's Ink

Last April, I was talking to a dear friend about my recurring frustration with seemingly never being able to finish anything.  Case in point: shortly after that conversation, I tried to write about a little bit more about my realizations. Almost a year later, I’m finally finding a way to put those words together. 

The most obvious (and to me, the most damning) example of this “failure” is the many works-in-progress I’ve yet to finish. In my head, I know there’s no deadline for me to finish these projects. The urgency is (mostly) manufactured; the sense of running behind, of being too late, of taking too long—most of that has to do with the way capitalism thrives on conflating productivity with worth.

Growing up, excellence wasn’t the gold standard—it was the bare minimum. Why? Because I was Black, and that meant I couldn’t do anything remotely close to all the stereotypes stacked against me.

I always strove for the highest grades, the perfect attitude, the polished appearance. God-forbid I was ever late or caught unawares. I had to know all the answers, anticipate every contingency, and have a damn good explanation for everything under the sun.

Buried underneath all that was a constant: prove yourself, because I don’t think you’re worth anything at all.

Unsurprisingly, all of this messaging found its way into my ideas of what it meant to be a writer. I had to put something out into the world, didn’t I? I had to prove that I was, in fact, writing. 

Everyone told me my words were powerful, and I knew that came with the responsibility to say things that no one else would. Along with this, however, was still that feeling of running out of time. As my health progressively declined over the years, I feared losing the capacity to write anything at all. Having lived through that loss, I toe a tentative line on the other side.

My ability to write can vanish after a bad doctor’s appointment, after a weekend of family socials, after a week of bad weather. It comes and goes with such inconsistency that of course the first thing I want to do when I have any shred of mental clarity is to chase it, to wring it for all its worth.

But at what cost?

Besides, I can’t even spend all that focus on writing if I wanted to. That energy gets used up on meal-planning, keeping track of bills, and tracking symptoms for doctors who may or may not take the time to listen to me.

Over the years, I have reframed my perspective somewhat. I know it’s not a personal failure of mine that I don’t have the capacity to write as much as I want to, as much as I used to. It’s nice to know, but it still doesn’t necessarily make the loss easier—and it’s the loss that I find myself dwelling on.

Because writing is what I love.

Story and song, mythos and magic, warmth and wonder: that’s how I experience the world, that’s how I feel alive.

The ever-shifting ways in which I can(‘t) engage with these things keeps me tenderhearted in unexpected ways. Sometimes I still worry I won’t do my characters justice, that I can’t write their stories in a way that truly and fully honors them.

I worry the same about my friends. Do I show them the kindness and care they’ve shown me? And of strangers—is there any relief I may offer, any gentleness, any levity when the world so often feels weary and overwhelming?

As for myself?

Well…I’ve learned some grace there too.

That sense of responsibility—of saying what others won’t, of weaving connections others have sensed but didn’t know how to name, of sharing some part of my story that might help someone else—it’s still there. I haven’t been given these words and stories for nothing, but there’s nothing to share if I don’t sit down and do the writing. This sounds like the same anxiety and frustration from the beginning, because don’t I need to finish something already? And isn’t it supposed to be powerful?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Not quite.

Not yet.

I can’t pretend to have all the answers, even to my own story, but I suspect there is more for me to live through before I can write all the things in my head. I have to carry these characters, these stories, these memories with me. We all have to journey together, getting to know ourselves and each other, learning what it is that we need to heal.

There is infinite value in this, and not because the result is perfection. In fact, the most precious part is the opposite: allowing all these parts of myself to be in flux, in process, incomplete and perfectly enough.

In a world that demands so much of me, in a globalized society built on destroying my worth, one of the most outrageously radical things I can do is to trust that who I am and how I experience the world and how I engage with others matters in beautiful, powerful, mysterious, ordinary, quiet, gentle, inconsequential, imperfect, absurd, and silly ways.

So here’s to valuing my own humanity, and giving myself room to breathe.