Kunst. Macht. Kunst. (In between a Michelle Rock and a Seda Hard Place).

I almost proposed to my boyfriend during Primary Election Weekend.

Well, maybe “proposed” is a strong verb.

You see, ever since the 2020 US Presidential Election, I’ve become an election poll worker regular. I’ve worked three major elections in the past 19 months. I look forward to the 44 hours of pollwork crammed into four days (including my weekend!) gleefully; not only because I enjoy participating in the democratic process but, typically, I get a good amount of reading done during the lulls (I attribute meeting my 2021 Goodreads yearly reading goal to the California Gubernatorial Recall Election). I had just finished Chapter 11 of Crying in H Mart (“What Procellous Awesomeness Does Not in You Abound?”) where Michelle impulsively, nay, bravely proposes to her boyfriend in the thrust of her mother’s treacherous physical/medical decline. I felt it a thunderous sign. Okay, so, yeah ok… I did first take a small detour to Michelle Zauner’s Instagram. I needed to confirm that she and Peter were still married. I arrived on her whimsical grid and tapped, gingerly, over every white male who made an appearance. Little black usernames appeared on screen, each leading to a new photojournal; Alas, none of them Peter. Then, on the ninth photo of Michelle’s June 4th carousel was a photo of a white (linen?) suit clad man walking alongside Michelle (in a dream outfit, looking a vision, as per usual) engaging in that type of walk-talk mambo that a lived-in relationship has got down to a science. Gingerly Tap. Peter. Cue Thunderous Sign.

I’ve never met a marriage I didn’t hate. I can’t think of one married couple who both like and respect each other equally (I need to meet better married people, I know). There’s always a subtle but evident incongruity (I often wonder if that incongruity is actually the secret sauce). I used to find marriage abhorrent. In my late teens and early twenties, you could often find me Pick Me-ing about how I’d never given thought to what type of wedding dress or engagement ring I’d want because it’s not something I ever devoted my feminist energy to…. plus, PLUS The Wedding Industrial Complex, man! As I’ve grown older, I teeter between a neutral and neutral-positive stance. I can’t say what has really changed in me other than I’ve grown up and I kinda “get it” now.

Another thing. A few years ago, while on a casual evening Instagram stalking spree, I came across an interesting post on a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend’s profile. At first glance, the post was just another divorce announcement. At closer peek, though, you realize that it’s a call to arms. Her caption challenges the reader to de-stigmatize divorce. She urges us to change the divorce narrative from “epic end-of-the-world failure” to “just another stage in the lifespan of that relationship”; just as it began and so it ends. That ethos really breathed life into me.

So, of course, when I read the dialogue below, I felt a familiar and comforting return to life.

“We can always get divorced if things go sour,” I said to him on the phone. “We can be, like, hip young divorced people.” “We’re not going to get a divorce,” Peter said. “I know but if we did, don’t you think ‘my first husband’ would make me sound so full of maturity and mystique?”

Crying in H Mart is one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. I’ll spare you the praise because there’s little that hasn’t already been said about it. Suffice it to say that as the eldest child of an immigrant mother who anticipates taking on the primary caregiver role for her parents in their old age paired with a career as a social worker for patients in similar need, the book hit a little too close to home. If you’ve not yet read it, it’s truly a must.

That’s the thing about good writing-a remarkably structured passage can evoke such a strong sensory impression, it can make you want to flip your world upside down and ask your partner for their hand in marriage just cause the protagonist did and it worked out for her. Books are wonderfully dangerous to impressionable people like me (I’m currently halfway though Milk Fed …God have mercy on my soul). After you sober up from your book hangover, you realize maybe that’s not at all what you want.

I took a break after finishing Chapter 12 (the wedding!!!) to chit chat with Seda, the 53-year-old Armenian-American divorcee who was pollworking beside me. We had gotten through the pleasantries (where do you work? live? etc) the day before and so we had now arrived at the Summer Plans part of the exchange. She asked me if I had anything to look forward to this summer. I shared that I’d be going on a Euro/Eurasia trip at the end of July to visit my partner who is living in Berlin for the summer. I told her all the places which we would travel to and all the dance parties we would attend. Seda smiled from ear-to-ear. She said that nothing makes her happier than a young woman who travels. She told me that she would be going to Greece in a few weeks and that she was excited to check another country off her list.

I proceeded to ask Seda what was the most memorable trip she’s ever been on. I, selfishly, like to ask this question in hopes people will ask me right back. I love talking about the time I hopped on a plane to Bolivia all by my 4'10" lonesome self. I knew from grin that her answer would be indelible.

“Paris, France!”

Look, I love Paris. It’s everything you’ve ever watched/read/been told about it. The people are magnificant. The cafes/shops are delightful. The buildings are cute and old and you might shed a tear walking around realizing that The French Revolution took place right in that very spot and you might have flashbacks of reading A Tale of Two Cities on the Metrolink while commuting in high school. I just expected Seda’s answer to be a little less obvious.

Nevertheless, I asked what about Paris made it so memorable. She replied “It’s how I celebrated my 50th birthday. It’s when I finally chose myself. It’s where I decided, right on The Seine, that I would ask my husband for a divorce”.

Seda was married for 20 years. She and her husband had good government jobs, a nice house in Van Nuys and, with no kids of their own, the disposable income to travel whenever they had the urge. Her husband, by her own account, is a wonderful man with whom she still keeps in touch. Seda says that ever since she was a little girl, she’s always hated her birthday. Celebrating herself has never come natural to her. Yet, something came over her when she was 49. She got the insatiable urge to celebrate big for her 50th. She wanted Paris. About six months before her birthday, she got up the courage to tell her husband what she wanted. I use the word “courage” specifically because, as she describes it, she is a chronic people pleaser and sharing her wants and needs was very uncharacteristic for her. She expected her husband to share in her enthusiasm for the big 5–0 plans but he did not match hers. Instead, he told her “I have no desire to go to Paris, it’s not my type of vacation. Do you think maybe your sister could go with you?”

At this point in the story, Seda’s voice begins to crack. It’s been almost four years since that conversation but she recalls her wave of emotions acutely. She said “I’d never felt as lonely in my life as in that moment.”

My stomach began to churn and I got a gulp in my throat. I knew that very feeling. Just as I was about to share my story of walking down the Berlin Wall, another pollworker jumped in: “The exact same thing happened to me and my ex-husband! I did everything he wanted: football games, concerts, his friends’ parties, his BJJ competitions, anything in bed. Then one time, I asked him to go wine tasting with me and my friends and he said he would rather throw himself off a cliff. I never asked him for a thing again and that was the beginning of the end!” Then a third pollworker jumps in “That’s me and my husband too! Except, we are still married. I’m too lazy to go through a divorce right now but my daughter is almost out of med school so maybe after that I will.”

Here I was on a Michelle Zauner-Peter Bradley high and was quickly sobered up by Seda Et al. I felt hot. I wanted some fresh air. I took my 15 minute break and pulled up Youtube videos of Michelle speaking. I felt too connected to a middle-aged Seda and needed to find some similarities between me and Michelle for reassurance. The problem was that interview after interview showed a cool, hip, confident, eloquent, powerful force of a woman. All those attributes were my aspirations, not my descriptors.

Feeling defeated, I walked back to my station and found Seda describing her newly renovated Condo in Burbank, then pulling up a picture of her new puppy (her ex-husband did not like animals) and, finally, sharing a picture of her on a Bateaux Parisiens Cruise on The Seine. This was it…the day she chose herself. She radiated elation in her bouncy updo and black evening dress. A cheery teenage boy in a tuxedo sat across from her with The Seine at their horizon. Since her husband did not want to join her in Paris, she took her young nephew. He made her yell “I’m fifty, bitches!” at the top of the Eiffel Tower (and yes, there is video proof).

I can’t stop thinking about Michelle’s bold assertiveness. I admire the way Seda chose herself. Initially, I thought these two women as diverging paths; two distinct choices that veer off onto opposite coasts. Then it became incredibly obvious that they were one and the same: two women bold enough to make the choice they wanted.

Making choices has always been frightening to me. I’m grateful for books and authors and elections and chatty coworkers for giving me the blueprint for bravery.

One thing I know is that ever since I stopped writing (okay, blogging…okay okay, journaling) my brain feels more jam packed. My Tiny Thoughts Blogspot got me through my undergraduate education (it literally [figuratively] carried me on its back). My Gen Z brother told me no one uses Blogger anymore and that I should migrate to Medium. So, here I go.