I haven’t been writing much lately. Well, I’ve been journaling, but not doing ‘serious writing.’ There are some pieces I wrote during my first session of Megan Devine’s Writing Your Grief that I haven’t published here, so I’ll do that over the next few days. As a bonus, this essay reminds me of the benefits of getting back to writing.
February 5, 2018
Today we were supposed to confront the reality that we are writing because someone has died. Below is a summary of the prompt.
"These are not just words. How can I possibly write? What is the story of the story I'm in?"
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Writing feels like my first language. I know that's an odd way of looking at it, as I both write and speak in English! (And in fact it's my only language. Whatever I learned in high school Spanish doesn't count.) But anyway, I feel so much more fluent with a pencil in my hand or seated at a keyboard than speaking. When I'm talking, my tone of voice may betray me. I've been told sometimes I unintentionally come across as annoyed or defensive or mean. My words may not say what I intend to say. When I write, I can go back and check before anyone ever sees it. I can make sure I'm communicating what I mean to.
And so how can I not write? This is how my heart tells me what I feel, how my brain tells me what I think. I put my hands to the keys and it just comes out.
In the middle of a very good life, something terrible, but sadly also common, happened to me: my beloved son died by suicide. I write because this is my reality. This is my truth. And a lot of other people need to know about it. Some of them need to know that if it happens to you, if you lose a child, it's survivable. And that grief comes in as many forms as there are grieving people, and so to walk softly. Some of them need to know that if it happens to someone you care about, not talking to them about the person they've lost doesn't mean they'll hurt less; in fact, you're hurting them more. Some of them need to know that if they're considering suicide as an answer to their problems, if you think that just not living anymore will solve everything, it's a lie. It's like a bomb going off that devastates everything and everyone in its vicinity. So I write. And me, there are things I need to know as well. So I write.