Semi-Colon Solidarity

On April 20, 2016, I was fired for the first time in my life.  For many people, this could be seen as the lowest point. Luckily, I had faced this possibility with my fiancé the night before, and I was better prepared than I thought I could be, emotionally.  Within twenty minutes of hearing the news, I had seen the silver lining gratitude of it, and actually felt more relieved than devastated by this new milestone of mine.

I had struggled in that role, and a lot of that struggle involved my mental health.  At first, I could blame SAD, and then, I thought it might be depression, and in the end, a counselor labelled it as social anxiety. I didn’t fit in with the culture of the organization, and they had no way of accepting me into their culture.  It was elementary, junior high, and high school (and first year of university) all over again! I tried to do what I could – I excelled in my role and was praised by my peers – but there was always this unsettling knowledge that I was DIFFERENT from everybody else. That difference was frequently things that I truly LOVE about myself, but not fitting in was always really hard on me.  Once I knew that I didn’t have to struggle with that, I realized that I was really free from the six-month struggle I had endured.

After clearing my things from my desk, I hopped on my bike and headed home, almost an hour later than I had anticipated.  Had I left at my planned time, I likely would have come across a similar scene as I approached the Parliament buildings, but I’m really glad for my timing on that day.

April 20 is 4:20, or the annual day for Marijuana activists to gather around legislative grounds in an effort to have the herb legalized.  Despite my activism, I have never actually been a part of a protest, nor a part of the crowds in the surrounding area. It was inspiring to be around so many passionate, stoned individuals.

Within those crowds, there was still traffic and crosswalk timings to deal with. I had hopped off my bike as I approached the crowds, and walked it alongside the masses making their way through the bottleneck that is the High Level bridge, right beside the Legislative grounds.  As I waited for the final light to change, a young woman’s voice spoke up beside me.

“Is that a semi-colon tattoo?” she asked.

I looked down at my wrist, as if to remind myself, and then looked up at the voice. “Yea, it is.”

“I’m glad you have one,” her tone delivered the deeper message behind the tattoo.

I paused for a moment, taking in what she had said. This was love – unconditional love – from a complete stranger, expressed as gratitude for my existence here, today, rather than the alternative a period would have created. “Thank you.”

“I have one of those, too,” her voice was a splendid mix of pride with just a hint of the humility all humans possess.

I stared back at my handlebars for a moment. The light changed, and my window for a response was closing. “I’m glad you have one, too.” I turned my head back to her and held her gaze long enough for her to feel my love for her, for all of the other people like us, brought together by a simple tattoo and the knowledge its presence revealed.

She smiled curtly, nodded her head, and almost whispered, “thank you.”

A semi-colon is a punctuation mark best used sparingly. It is a moment when the writer could have chosen to end their thought, but decided instead to carry on.  I have a friend who used a period. I really wish she hadn’t. I know the sentence was a struggle for her. I know she had used semi-colons in the past, and it hadn’t made the next part any better. Her life had become a run-on sentence she could no longer run in. I know her sentence is over now; her story continues on my wrist. 

I hope conversations like the one I had on April 20, 2016 help with more people who ever contemplate the proper punctuation.