I’ve been putting out my writing in different places. This is making me terrified. I am terrified because I am saying things that could possibly bring some blow back. Yet that isn’t happening. I’m saying to white people, “Nah, this is what is happening,” and they are replying with, “Wow, I never thought about it that way. Thanks.” Folks, this just never happens. Ever. I’m feeling like I might survive someone not liking what I have to offer. I also have this strange feeling that I am doing my job.
In the middle of all this, my student Luka decided to give me a tarot reading. With how uneasy I feel about not returning to work, I thought this would be the perfect time to take him up on this. So, let me tell you a little about Luka. He feels like a found precious object. I met him when he came skidding into our suite during a pagan conference. He seems quiet and competent and attentive. He is all of those things. He is also a bitch and I adore him for it. They say Cancers fight by yelling, “I will end you!” but Scorpios just quietly walk behind those folks and slit their throat. That is my Luka. He is also Indigenous. There is something I am deeply appreciating about this. He makes me feel less lonely.
He also has ridiculous skills. So here I am sitting at this table with Luka as he is reading me to filth with these cards. I am so nervous about the future at this point. And he picks up a card with a picture of a man carrying sticks in a bundle on his back. Luka hesitates. “I think you are going to pick up your sticks and go home,” he says. And just like that, the bottom falls out of my world.
I am a professor. It’s what I do for a living. I love teaching and working with students, and at the school I am at, I am encouraged to think of it as a spiritual calling. But for the last couple years, I can’t pretend to not see the bullshit anymore. It’s bad there. Really bad. Every day. I love my colleagues, who wisely love me back. Working in academia means that you are pretty much stuck with them for the rest of your life, so I’m happy that I like the folks I work with. I love my students, for the most part. I could do without the white guys who seem to think I’m their maid. But most of my white male students think I’m cool and want to talk about my tattoos all the time. Even so, that is a very small part of the inconvenience. And I can usually redirect the difficult ones with a talk during office hours.
It’s the world outside my department that is the problem. Mostly because I am a monster. Now my students spend time with me three times a week. They have come to accept me, even with all my stigmas. My colleagues have known me for over 20 years and see me as just another colleague. Sometimes I have to remind them that I am fat, or Indigenous, or disabled. That has its own pros and cons. But when I go to any function where there are people who are not used to seeing me, I am a monster, and they treat me as such. They stare, and do not respond when I say hello. They watch me eat, if I can even get to any food, because no event is ever set up to be accessible to my wheelchair. My opinion is worth nothing, even in the area in which I have expertise. I never get anything on the first try. Not promotions. Not sabbaticals. The only outside person who immediately gave me credit was a guy with a noble savage fetish. No, I don’t know all your Plains connections. I’m from the Southwest. And worse, watching what happens to Black women in this institution. Seeing 20 years of men of color taken down by accusations of sexual impropriety. Always that thing. Always by a young blonde woman. Maybe some of them did something wrong. But not all of them. It defies statistics, and we live by statistics. I listen to friends talk about the targets on their backs. I watch it play out. And folks with skin privilege like myself, we get kept but messed with. I am the only faculty member who is Native American.
So, of course, I burst into tears hearing this. I get myself together and look at Luka, who is patting my arm sympathetically.
“But I fought so hard to get here,” I said, staring at the card. I know the truth when I see it.
“You can’t work for free for these people. They will take and take. They will drain you dry.”
Luka knows. He’s been watching me set up contracts and do other work for the department while I’m on disability. He knows when I’m getting jerked around. And I think he also knows he is delivering a message that I am not entirely ready to hear.
“I love my job,” I say, unconvincingly.
I loved my job. I don’t know that I have loved it in a long time. I am tired of committees and microaggressions and macroaggressions and just the sheer meanness that seems to pervade every space in academe. But this is who I am. This is who I am. This is who I am! Thirty years of Buddhist practice make one aware of attachment and how that leads to suffering. It also leads to feeling foolish when I catch yourself doing it.
I’m glad he’s here, because the room is doing that weird twisty thing again. “You could write,” he says, in that sweet but slightly infuriating way. Over his head is a strange shimmering that is nodding its head. Or what seems to be a head at the moment. I feel surrounded by love, but the floor just slipped out from under my feet. Fucking Saturn return.
When I bring this up with the Mighty B, she is overjoyed. She thinks this is brilliant. Yes, it’s time to start the transition out of this career that is eating me alive. I’m left to stare at her blankly. She’s been encouraging me to think about these things forever. I have been ignoring her. But now that this moment is here, and Guardians are involved, and my student’s cards are calling me out, and I’m on disability and don’t know when I can return to work, she is staring me down with her black eyes. I take a deep breath and sigh. This is why I keep coming back to therapy. Because I love myself and all my freaking parts.
“Ok, let’s do this.”
“Ok. So, tell me what feels scary about leaving your position at the college.”
Seyewailo 