All the words I have for now

on writing our true stories

Nov 14, 2024

Hi, readers of the intangibles! I’m essayist Allison Kirkland, and this publication is here to make the writing life more transparent, inclusive and community-oriented for writers of creative nonfiction and memoir. Thanks for being here!

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Sunflowers I spotted on our last day in Brighton

The day of the United States Presidential election I was sitting in a café in Brighton, England, trying to write, but mostly thinking about what it would be like to arrive back in North Carolina in a few days after three months in England.

I probably should have been packing. But I was in a café, trying to chip away at my memoir-in-progress, because that café had begun to feel like home and I wanted to soak up all of the cozy joys of Brighton before we left on November 8th. And because that café always played a great soundtrack.

The election was on my mind. It was on my mind as I packed up my laptop that morning. It was on my mind as I ordered a raspberry tea and sipped it slowly, letting it warm me. It was on my mind as I texted my friends back home. Some of them were phone banking. Some of them were driving people to the polls.

The election was on my mind that morning when I heard the first notes of Nina Simone's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" in the café. My ears perked up and I stopped typing so I could hear better. An American voice. Not just that, but a North Carolinian, just like me.

I'd never heard the song before. Can you believe that? Its jubilant, bold verses wrapped me up in its urgency and its plea.

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

I wish I could break all the chains holding me

I wish I could say all the things that I should say

Say them loud

Say them clear

For the whole round world to hear

Each verse grew louder and stronger and more sure of itself. It was like a train that took me along with it. I sat up straighter in my seat as I felt the drums swell in my ribcage. The song made me feel more powerful.

When it was over I had tears in my eyes. I thought that maybe hearing that song, for the first time, on that day of all days, was a good sign. We might move toward liberation. We might actually do it.

That night we went to bed before we knew the results of the election, but when we got up the next morning at 6am European time to check our cell phones my eyes saw what my tossing, turning body had already known.

I didn't cry like I had in 2016. This time it was nausea. I had trouble eating for a few days. When I did eat, I had trouble keeping food down, even retching a few times over the toilet.

(I want to ask the people I know who voted for him — or who didn't vote at all — if their bodies felt like this, too. Or what their bodies felt like when other Presidents led the country. Do they take notice of their bodies at all?)

Now I am tired, the kind of tired that feels like it has permanently settled deep in my bones. I know I need to get back to work. But I just need a little bit more rest.

I became a writer and teacher so I could teach myself and others how to write true stories. If I'm honest, it's because I believed our stories have the power to change people's minds. I wanted to create change.

In the past few years, as I've seen my fellow women and my fellow disabled writers and also people of color and LGBTQIA+ writers tell their stories in the hopes of changing people's minds while the world moves backwards, I started wondering if anyone listens. And now I'm really not sure what I believe. Is telling our true stories just a waste of time if they might not ever change minds?

In the days after the election a hardness settled over me. I wondered if anything mattered. I even wondered if art mattered, or if it was just something pretty to look at while the world burned. My body reflected this: I could feel myself closing off, getting numb. The muscles in my neck were stiff, my throbbing jaw was so tight, as if to trap any words I might need to say. My tight jaw wouldn’t let those words come out because I was done talking. I was done trying to make others hear me. Nobody listened anyway.

Then, tucked in the newsletter of a fellow Substacker, I came across a poem I'd never seen before: Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye. The poem, which you should read if you haven’t, describes a moment when people with very different backgrounds and even different language come together in understanding in the most inhumane and sterile of environments: the airport.

As I read it, I felt my face warm, and tears prick my eyes. The last line:

“This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

I didn’t know if I believed that line — not at that moment — but the warmth of the poem washed over me. I thought of the poet who had written it, the tenderness and care she’d taken to make each word right, the hope and promise that sat in her ribcage as she arranged the words on the page.

My jaw loosened as I began to cry. It felt so good to cry. I was back in my body. This poem handed me back to myself.

Writing this essay you're reading now brought me back to myself, too. It showed me what I was feeling and thinking. It helped me make sense of myself.

I will never stop writing my true stories. I hope you don't either. They might not change minds, but they proclaim our own existence across time. Our stories still matter, even if nobody hears them. Because we need to witness ourselves. Because we deserve to be returned to our own bodies.

Even if nobody reads these words, I wrote them. They are here.

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