In September 2016, I was attending my cousin’s wedding in Minneapolis. It was the morning of the wedding and I was helping set up a few things in the reception hall with a couple of other family members. That’s when I got a text with some good news from my friend Jenna that she’d gotten into a residency program in London that she really wanted to attend.
And in front of everyone, my mom especially, I burst into tears. It surprising me most of all and I didn’t know what I was reacting to for a moment. There was nothing and then there was crying. Then I realized that it had felt like a very long, long time since I’d received good news.
At that time, in the last two weeks alone a coworker my age had died in a car crash, I’d been feverishly sick, I’d gone to the courthouse alone to get my divorce, my best friend’s dad was in a serious accident leaving him not out of the woods in the ICU, and I was now at a wedding (again, mere days after my divorce was final).
So at the sliver of good news for Jenna I lost it for a moment. I had forgotten, genuinely and unknowingly, that good things could happen.
I didn’t burst into tears today at the news of the SCOTUS decision protecting LGBTQ people from being discriminated against in the workplace, but I felt a similar numbness and disbelief in the midst of all the hard things (terrible, brutal, enraging things) happening in the world. This is a good thing — and really a basic fucking human right that I can’t believe hadn’t been said already — but it feels like a miracle from a system that in so many ways has been stripping people of their dignity and humanity.
This is a good thing. Breathe out. Breathe in. It’s not over yet.
With Love,
Natalie