It’s warm, and I am calm. I love summer. Good summer, that is. Summer, where the air is cool and the birds are out, where I don’t have to worry about work or school. Not bad summer, where the heat is so intense you feel as if you’re boiling alive in your skin. Where the trees and grass droop and you’re brutally reminded of the inevitability of climate change.
But today was good summer. And that’s all that mattered.
I am meeting a friend for coffee. It has been ages since I’ve seen them, and I am excited to hear how the past few months have treated them. We’ve known each other for ages, and I am ready for the comfort of an old friend.
I order a chai, they order a coffee, and as we speak, our conversation veers to my studies as a Women and Gender studies major and my work fighting for and protecting the rights of my community. I am tired. Both physically and mentally. I tell them about how exhausting it is to wake up each morning, go to class, and talk about how the world has been and continues to be built against my community. To learn about all the ways we’ve backstabbed, stolen, and murdered our way to success. To feel so small and helpless and so desperate for change all at the same time. To work and volunteer and read and educate and feel like I’ve made a miniscule impact if any at all. To know my community continues to suffer and bleed and mourn no matter how hard I work, how dedicated I am, or how quickly I move. My chai is warm and watery by the time I finish, and they are quiet.
“Well, what if you did something else?” they ask, all in good faith and concern for a friend who’s hurting. “What if you studied something else and did this on the side? When you can manage it?”
My friend is white and cis and heterosexual. They know a life of luxury and ease that I have tasted through certain parts of my identity but one I will never fully live in. Perhaps that’s why their question doesn’t surprise me.
I smile and pause, staring into the depths of my watery chai. It’s a good question. Why do something so tiring? So all-consuming? So difficult on the body, mind and spirit? What would a life without the work look like for me? Would I be happier, lighter, freer? Would I be able to do it?
The answer comes to me quietly. No. No, I wouldn’t. And not for some righteous, I-art-holier-than-thou BS.
“I care too,” my friend says, and I know they do, “but I do it, all the social justice, when I can and focus on the rest of my life when I’ve done it.”
I sit back and nod, a realization forming in my mind. It’s not that simple for me, nor is it for the hundreds of thousands of others in my position. I realize that I can’t ever just stop or forget the work I’m doing. Not because I’m an obsessive, work-a-holic but because it’s not just work for me. It’s my life. I can’t just leave work at the office, separate the two spheres of my world, because they are one and the same. My work focuses on the protection of my people, my fellow women, my LGBTQIA+ family. And my life is these women and this LGBTQIA+ family.
Others can be a businessman in the office and a father at home. I am a woman at work and at home. I am queer in the office and in the streets. I am neurodivergent everywhere I go. There is no separation for me. The discrimination I fight is the discrimination I face every day. When I’m not working, I’m being reminded through the actions of others, the news, the politicians, the people of my work. I can’t just do it for a bit or when I have spare time because it is who I am — the most intimate parts of my being. I am fighting for my right to exist…and you can’t just do that when you have spare time.
My work doesn’t have set hours; it is 24/7. 24/7 educating others, supporting my communities, correcting those who slander us, and fighting for our survival. There are no set hours for changing the world. No time sheets. No clocking in or out. No vacation days. Doing this work means you do it every hour of every day because you are not trying to survive in the system with a steady job but change the very system itself. And that takes a lot more work than simply going with it.
I don’t regret it. I love my work. It’s life-giving, even if it’s exhausting. There’s a community of the most extraordinary people that I could never leave. I have found myself in them, and even when I’m weary, their unconditional support propels me forward.
I explain this to them, and they nod.
That doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is less, I feel the urge to say. We all have a passion and a drive. Some are driven to educate the mind or ensure the body is clothed and fed. Some seek to make policies to protect the body or define the laws that support its existence. Yours, my friend, is to understand and cure the human body. Mine is to make sure the human body has a place to exist safely. All are worthy causes.
And living within the system is not something to feel ashamed for; we all live here. What’s important is that, at some level, we try to make it better. My work is all about that, and I know you can find niches in your work where you, too, can make a change. I can’t have a 9 to 5 because I am a queer, neurodivergent woman working in a world that actively works against me. But you can. Use that. Use your privilege of rest. Use it to pick up the slack when we fall short. And I promise that I, too, will use my privilege when I find I can. We can do it together.
They nod, smiling.
“You’re gonna need more caffeine than what’s in that chai,” they say.
And they’re right. I’d better add a shot of espresso next time.