This was not me and never would be. I could be supportive, but I couldn’t be a robot.
I now tried out a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be.
They’re not special at all. The South Side is filled with kids like that.
One day I made note of a New York Times article I’d read that reported widespread fatigue, stress, and unhappiness among American lawyers – most especially female ones. “How depressing,” I wrote in my journal.
There were days, weeks, and months when I hated politics. And there were moments when the beauty of this country and its people so overwhelmed me that I couldn’t speak.
I wanted to believe that there was a guy who’d materialize and become everything to me, who’d be sexy and solid and whose effect would be so immediate and deep that I’d be willing to rearrange my priorities. It just wasn’t the guy standing in front of me right now.
I knew I was no smarter than any of them. I just had the advantage of an advocate. I thought about this more often now that I was an adult, especially when people applauded me for my achievements, as if there weren’t a strange and cruel randomness to it all. Through no fault of their own, those second graders had lost a year of learning. I’d seen enough at this point to understand how quickly even small deficits can snowball, too.
I’d greet him with a playful fist bump onstage at an event in Minnesota, which would then make headlines, interpreted by one Fox commentator as a “terrorist fist jab,” again suggesting that we were dangerous.
A word now about the bar exam: It’s a necessary chore, a rite of passage for any just-hatched lawyer wishing to practice, and though the content and structure of the test itself vary somewhat from state to state, the experience of taking it – a two-day, twelve-hour exam meant to prove your knowledge of everything from contract law to arcane rules about secured transactions – is pretty much universally recognized as hellish.
Why didn’t you tell us?” she said. “Because it’s too much money.” “That’s actually not for you to decide, Miche,” my dad said gently, almost offended. “And how are we supposed to decide, if we don’t even know about it?
As Americans obsessed over the threat of terrorism, many were overlooking the racism and tribalism that were tearing our nation apart.
Our afternoons together taught me that there was no formula for motherhood. No single approach could be deemed right or wrong. This was useful to see. Regardless of who was living which way and why, every small child in that playroom was cherished and growing just fine.
It was as if he’d surrendered a part of himself as a way of coping.
You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.
We understood, in other words, how ridiculously fortunate we were, and we both felt an obligation not to be complacent.
If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others. I wasn’t interested in slotting myself into a passive role, waiting for Barack’s team to give me direction. After coming through the crucible of the last year, I knew that I would never allow myself to get that banged up again.
Which led to a second revelation about certain nonprofits, especially young-person-driven start-ups like Public Allies, and many of the bighearted, tirelessly passionate people who work in them: Unlike me, it seemed they could actually afford to be there, their virtue discreetly underwritten by privilege, whether it was that they didn’t have student loans to pay off or perhaps had an inheritance to someday look forward to and thus weren’t worried about saving for the future.
Optics would always rule our lives.
If he lost, he’d move on from politics altogether and find a different sort of job. If it didn’t work out on Election Day, this would be the end. Really and for real, this would be the end.
Everyone seemed to fit in, except for me. I look back on the discomfort of that moment now and recognize the more universal challenge of squaring who you are with where you come from and where you want to go. I also realize that I was a long way, still, from finding my voice.