grief + the insane writer

I smoke and I drink and every time I blink

I have a tiny dream

But as bad as I am, I am proud of the fact

that I’m worse than I seem

Ani DiFranco

***

I’m writing my first book and I just hit my first self-imposed mini-milestone.

Ten thousand words.

Ten thousand words seem like so many and like nothing at the same time. I’ve been bleeding onto these pages and yet, I’ve barely even scratched the surface. I’m not in a place where I’m ready to speak freely about this project, mostly cause it’s about real people and I’m protecting privacy while I’m still reaching out to them — but I will say that I’m writing a memoir and it’s really fucking sad. Iykyk.

This experience has been a mental metamorphosis of sorts and I’m definitely still in the chrysalis phase. Everything is melting into a black soupy mess and I think I will eventually emerge as a changed person, but right now — I’m soup. All of the thoughts in my head about writing this book are filling up all available space in my brain and I need to get them out to reduce the insanity. So, I’m here to blog vaguely at you about grief and writing.

image credit: @chloefrayne on ig

This is all-consuming. Mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. And it’s only just begun. I’ve cracked open a crater of grief that I’ve been avoiding for almost a decade. This loss was a loss so significant and so complicated that I tucked the entire mess away in a box and placed it on the highest shelf a long time ago. I’ve been terrified to face it because I knew it would bring me all the way to my knees. I knew it would wreck me on a level I couldn’t yet comprehend. And I was right. Recently, I took the box back down and began unpacking. And now that I’m here wading in its depths, I realize that everything has been perfectly preserved.

The shock.

The heartache.

The devastation.

The love.

It’s all here.

Still fresh, still raw.

Unprocessed.

Waiting to be consumed.

Or waiting to consume me.

I still can’t tell which.

Grief is weird like that.

It waits for you.

and while it’s waiting, it festers

and bubbles over

and seeps into your life through cracks you can’t see

and it paralyzes you in ways you can’t recognize

until one day

you do.

For the first time in my life, I understand the “insane writer” trope. And I know I’m going to be here for a while. I definitely feel like I’m living inside of my own psychotic depressive bubble these days — two steps removed from my current reality, fully immersed in the 2008 version of my life. Which was, without question, the wildest version. As I recreate these scenes, they read like fiction. One after another, these stories sound outrageous and fabricated. But they aren’t.

As I dig through this box, I’m uncovering memories I didn’t know I even had anymore. Little pockets of grief are hidden inside each of them to remind me of the love that lived there. And every single one breaks me all over again. I sob while I write it out of my brain, and then I move on to the next one. Write, sob, repeat. These memories, which dripped slowly at first, have now flooded my whole existence. If I didn't have a husband and two kids, I would absolutely be locking myself in an old cabin off the grid, smoking Newport cigarettes and drinking bottles of Absinthe, until I finished this project. Instead, I have to keep myself submerged just enough to feel it, but not so much that I lose myself in it.

It’s a narrow area of existence, I assure you.

Please don’t be alarmed. I’m okay.

Like, barely.

But still, I’m okay.

I have a therapist and a spiritual advisor and everything will be fine.

This experience is ripping me apart, but it is also putting me back together.

If you want to follow along as I write my book, scroll all the way down and drop your email address in the "still curious?" box below, and tap join. I won’t spam you, I promise. I will send book and blog updates though.