I'd woken up about two hours before my alarm was set to go off, so I had a comparatively lazy morning. I was doing all of the things I normally do to get ready, but at about 80% speed. Even though I got up two hours early, I didn't leave two hours early; I left about 90 minutes early.
There was some back-and-forth, as I checked and double-checked to see whether I'd forgotten anything. I came back into my bedroom to grab the novel my girlfriend had just bought for me, and headed towards the car. Then I remembered that I might need my tablet, so I turned around again and grabbed the tablet. And again to get a charger. And again, and again.
But I did eventually get out the door. I drove up to the gate, and got out to unlock it. Once I'd swung it open, driven through, parked again, and almost gotten it closed, I noticed that I'd neglected to put on any rings. I normally wear at least one, just for the look of it; a simple accessory. I only have a few, and they were all gifts, but I like trying to match them to whole outfits. But whatever fingers I'd put any of them on, I never put them on my left ring finger, because it has a cultural significance. When Kim asked if I wanted to be her girlfriend, after I'd gotten over flailing and squealing about that, one of the consequences of my "yes" answer was that I started making sure I wore a ring on my left ring finger every day.
This was not to say that Kim and I are destined to be married, or any other sort of farcical teenage dream. It was just a way for me to strongly suggest, to anyone who might want to hit on me, that I am no longer available to anyone else, romantically or sexually. Got it covered.
I hesitated by the gate, but then decided that I should just get going, because it wasn't a huge deal. I locked the gate, got back into my car, set up my GPS, and started driving. And before long, a bunny came shooting out of the brush to my left, and I made the tragic mistake of braking and changing my course slightly. Since the bunny did the same general thing at the same time, instead of being able to dodge where my car had been going, it got directly under the tires.
I suppose it died instantly. I certainly hope that it did.
I became extremely upset. I slowed down tremendously and agonized through tears over whether to turn back around, to see if the bunny had survived at all, to maybe take it to a veterinarian. I kept on driving, though, telling myself that since I'd been so sick the previous week, and not even at school (or blogging!), that I could not afford the time. I felt awful committing to that path. Committing to busywork while a creature I'd gravely wounded or killed was lying on the road.
And then my mind did the thing that it's always done. It started suggesting reasons why this all happened. If I hadn't woken up so early. If I hadn't convinced myself that I could get into the school a couple hours before my usual time, and get some things done. If I hadn't forgotten to put on a ring. If I hadn't hesitated while debating whether to go back to the house and get one. If I'd just gone back to get one.
My mind invented this fantasy, that because I had neglected to put on the mildly culturally significant ring, I was being punished in some sort of cosmic, karmic sense. I had gone off course, and needed to be pushed back onto it by any means necessary. Sacrifices had to be made.
All of which is obviously absurd. But it does speak to our need to make sense of the world, and the events in it. People want to be able to say that everything happens for a reason, and to believe that utterly. It means that when commercial jets are being smashed deliberately into skyscrapers, there is some larger purpose. It means that when a kid you thought you knew starts shooting up your school, they're not just bitter or angry or from some kind of broken home where none of their emotional needs are being met, they are an Agent of God.
This is how religions start, by the way. And also bigotry. Someone somewhere sees something that needs an explanation. And in a particularly non-scientific way, they deduce reasons for that thing, and then select the most appealing one. I am positively bonkers about Kim. I suppose that means that on some level, I'm afraid of fucking things up, I'm afraid I'll lose her. How? Well, most likely by forgetting a trivial token accessory, apparently.
So this narrative gets constructed in my head, one where I am closing the gate and locking it as the bunny is kissing its family good-bye before charging across the danger zone to get to the really good food on the other side. Where I hesitate for some reason, and the bunny turns back and gets something it left behind in the warren. Where I depress the accelerator, and the bunny sees the looming clearing of the road on the other side of some brush, and a glorious field beyond that. Where I kill the bunny because there is a reason for it.
But the bunny didn't die for me. It didn't die for anything. It died because it could not survive the way the world works right now. It did the thing it was born to do — it died, and ultimately the best that would come of it would be that its body would be eaten by something else. And then passed. And then absorbed. And then absorbed again. And then eaten, and then eaten again.
Tragedies are called senseless, because they are. They are utterly without purpose. And so, inherently, are we. But we are also sentient, and can decide upon our own purpose. We can make our own meaning of life. Our own Meaning of Life, rather.
I calmed myself down by the time I got to Everett Station to jump on my bus downtown. I chatted with Kim a bit, I let myself be where I was, on the bus. A man with a bike got on after two other people had already loaded into the bike rack, filling it, and the bus driver let him just roll his bike into the front area of the bus. He told the man that if someone in a wheelchair boarded, he would have to kick him off, and the man said it was fine. The bus driver laughed, and said he was kidding. I smiled.
I went to both of my classes, checked in with my instructors about having been out sick the previous week, and left. My mildly transphobic friend Rich, and his wife, gave me a ride to Westlake Center, so I could catch my bus to Everett Station without having to walk anywhere dark or unsafe. As usual. Right as I rounded the corner from where they dropped me, I saw my route pulling up, so I ran. I got to the bus in plenty of time to board, and plopped into my seat, feeling fortunate to have gotten there right when the bus did.
The previous evening, Kim had been talking about friends of hers, and mentioned another trans girl who lives in Seattle, whom she'd met a few times in a few ways before finally just establishing a friendship. And when I saw her picture, I knew I'd seen her before, but I couldn't place where, at first. But then I remembered; she had written to me on my OK Cupid awhile ago, just reaching out to be friendly. And I'd written her back, more or less saying that I'd be happy to meet up some time, but that I was absurdly busy. But we had never really talked. When I got home, I messaged her from my OK Cupid, with my personal private Facebook URL, and told her that she knew my girlfriend, and that we should definitely hang out soon! So she added me.
We chatted on and off a bit throughout the day yesterday, mostly mundane stuff. But when I was riding the bus back to Everett Station, she asked me about confidence. She asked how I was so confident, how I could seem so cool and calm no matter what, because she did not feel that way, herself. My response, perhaps somewhat predictably, was to ask if she had seen Avengers.
With this conversation fresh in my mind, with the clarity of having put a major component of my life philosophy into words, I walked back to my car, alone. I saw a man standing by the Swift terminal, looking somewhat lost. I try to avoid mentioning this next thing, in general, because I think it's kind of bullshit that people insist on mentioning it when talking about someone even when it's not relevant, but it's actually kind of relevant, here. He was a black man. Relatively young, dressed in something that is probably close to what you are imagining right now. A lot of loose, draped clothing, and pretty nice headphones.
He said, "hey, excuse me, do you know how late Swift runs?" I went up to the map on the opposite side from where he was standing, found the schedule, and told him it looked like he had just missed the last one. It runs until 10p, and it was about 10:15p by then. His face fell. He was fucked. Proper fucked.
"Where are you trying to get to?" I asked him. "There's like a Home Depot near here," he began. "Near 128th? Airport and 99?" I said. "Yeah. I don't know. I think so," he replied. He didn't seem to be listening too closely. He was clearly distressed. As anyone might be if they were stuck at a bus station more than five miles from where they were headed, alone, at night. He was trying to call or text someone with a flip phone. A phone just like the one I had before I finally managed to fit a smartphone into my budget, albeit a shitty smartphone.
"I know where that is, do you want a ride? It's not very far, and my car is just over there" I said, pointing, smiling. He froze. I don't think that he necessarily even expected me to still be standing there talking to him, once I'd pointed out that he missed the last bus. But he recovered quickly, composed himself, and said yes, that would be great. He asked me to pull around and pick him up near where the bus we'd just gotten off of was, because he wanted to ask the driver something first (probably if there was any way he could get himself out of Everett Station at that time of night). We started to part, heading in opposite directions.
Turning, I said, "hey, what's your name?" when he was about 30 feet away. I couldn't quite hear him. "Kim?" I said, laughing to myself. Did this guy seriously have the same name as my girlfriend? "KEN," he said, louder. "Oh! Hi, Ken," I said. "Yeah, what's your name?" he asked. "I'm Sera," I replied. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Sera," he said. We both smiled and continued our separate directions again.
On the way back to the car, alone, in the dark, in a wide-open space that usually fills me with dread and isolation, I felt very alive and connected to everything. I was not really afraid. Fear was with me, as always, but that's the rest of the secret. I don't run from it, anymore. I sit with it and hold it and let it know that I'm here, and that everything will be okay. I was alert, don't get me wrong, but I was not on edge.
I got back to my car, and it occurred to me that, according to the precepts of American culture, I was making a huge mistake. I was a tiny white trans girl, and I'd just invited some random black guy to get into my car and let me drive him someplace. I thought, maybe he will kill me and take my... what, $20 or something. I don't really have anything much worth taking. Not that can be taken, anyway.
Maybe he will forcibly take my car from me, I thought. He was almost certainly stronger than me. I'm misleadingly tough, but also made of cupcake. Not the shitty, cloying, sweet kind. A nice fluffy kind that cannot actually hold anything up because it is basically just baked air. I supposed that if he did take my car, it would probably be because he really needed it.
I thought that, if I did die, people would notice right away, especially if the circumstances were awful. They would notice because I have been connecting with them. With so many people, especially in the last month or two. People would see the story of this trans woman who had been reaching out to everyone, everywhere, trying to help them all feel even just a little more okay. To help them feel safe and happy, to help them stay healthy.
I smiled, coasting slowly along the outside walks of Everett Station, and then I spotted Ken. I stopped to let him in, having already programmed my GPS to go to the Home Depot I thought he was trying to get near. He was on the phone with someone, asking about the cross streets. "On 128th?" he asked them. "Off of 99?" I asked him. "Off of 99?" he asked them, in turn. The destination confirmed, he said he'd be there soon, and hung up.
He started thanking me profusely, saying things like "God is great," and that my coming to help him when he was literally lost had some kind of greater significance. I of course do not believe any of that, but there was no value in my arguing the point. It helped him to understand his world and the way that it works, and it seemed to keep him happy and in a state of gratitude. I'm all for that, and I kind of don't care how people get there, as long as they're not hurting anyone else with it.
Ken asked how my day had gone, and I started to laugh. I explained that the day had been tiring, and that the entire last month or so had been such a whirlwind. Not a bad whirlwind, just busy and very much not at all what I'd been prepared for. We talked about how I learned my lesson about engaging with trolls on Twitter over the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. In typical Sera fashion, I did not really ask him much about himself, which is something I need to keep working on. I'm very good at talking at people, but I'm still kind of crap at talking with them.
As we approached the Home Depot, he said, "I think this is the street I need right here, actually, if you wouldn't mind turning here." It was into a residential area, not terribly well lit. My terror levels did rise, I must admit, but it was by about a hundredth of a percent. By that time, Ken had heard about how I was going to go speak in Pennsylvania soon, to try to convince high school students that they should be nice to each other, basically. He had offered some suggestions about things to say, things very close to what I'd essentially already been planning to say.
It occurred to me that I felt more or less safe around Ken by that point because we knew each other's names. I'd given him one of my social cards. I didn't know every last detail about him or his life, I didn't know about the best or worst things he'd ever done, but I knew that he was there in my car with me because I'd invited him to be there. I'd invited him to be there because I did not want him to be stranded seven miles from his friends or family or whoever I was taking him to, and the thought of a lone black man having to walk that far alone at night terrified me. For him. It seemed like a great way for him to get himself dead in ways that keep happening for Black America, and that breaks my fucking heart every time I hear another story about it. And I think he knew that, too. I think that's why he was so genuinely grateful.
I dropped him at the entrance of the parking area for the complex he was trying to get to, and with the door open and the cab light on, I looked at him pleadingly, and said, "please stay safe." And he smiled and thanked me again, shook my hand, promised to look me up on Facebook later. And then he was gone.
The black man I'd invited into my car about 15 minutes earlier, whom I had not met or known in any way prior to that, did literally the opposite of everything our culture tells us that black men do. He was polite. He was kind. He was engaged and engaging. He was interested and interesting. He cared about trans people dying. He cared about black people dying. The common theme, of course, is that he cared. About people. Dying. He seemed grateful to me not for just giving him a ride, for helping him personally, but for the fact that I exist at all, and that this is what I am doing with my life. He was absolutely not threatening in the slightest, in any way — not in his body language or speech or manner, nothing. Nowhere. At all. And I wonder how many people can actually see that when they see a person who, at a glance, looks so very different from them.
All of this was possible not just because I am afraid all the time, but because I know it, and embrace it. I don't run from it. My response to fear is not to turn away, but to lean in. And lately, when faced with the possibility of doing something, anything, my response is, "that sounds terrifying. Let's do it." This is not thrill-seeking. This is accepting the worst possible outcome (or whatever I imagine that might be), accepting fear, thanking it for the warnings and advice, and then living my life anyway. Doing what I think matters anyway.
I want to help people. I want especially to help people who are often overlooked and underserved. I want to change that balance. It's a huge scale, and I surely cannot make it move much on its own, but maybe other people will see me trying, and join me. That's my Meaning of Life. To make the biggest and most positive difference I can before I die.
When I was finally almost home, I started to feel a bit agitated again. I was almost to where the bunny had been struck about 12 or 13 hours prior. I wondered if any good at all had come of its death. I wondered if my conclusion would be proven sound. I wondered if the body would be gone, most likely dragged off somewhere to nourish something else, something grateful, inasmuch as it could be, that the work of catching and killing had been done for it. That it wasn't so much that anything happened for any particular reason, but that whatever happened was ultimately going to work out.
The body was gone. Nothing has a purpose. But everything is going to be okay.
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