Strikethrough: To bear the moment, unlock the stories, & do right by her name.

Logic has no jurisdiction in the land of grief.

I have not been able to write since that day.

I have not written a word since I got the call.

I was writing that morning about Kali, page after page, on the necessity of death and destruction so that what is new and needed could be born, but I do not know what could be born of this loss, and so I have not put pen to paper since.

My mother called me that morning, but I was busy writing in my diary, dark red ink called writer's blood, words about Kali and destruction and the way death claims what it will. Then came the text that said to call her back right away. Then came words I did not, could not, and still do not understand/believe/accept.

I have not been able to
I have not been able to write
I have not been able to write since
I have not been able to write since she died.

She died.
She
Died
She dieddieddieddieddied.

No. Nope.

My fingers still click on the keyboard, but I've stopped looking at the screen. My eyes are shut tight, my lungs not moving air, my head shakes back and forth, a rhythmic stream of nonononono.

NO.

As if I can bargain with the finite clarity of a reality like this.

As if any of us can help but try.

~~~

Five months later, tonight, right now, I manage to type the words here. Just above this line.
Do you see them?

Sure, I added those strikethroughs after.
You get it right?
I couldn't handle just seeing them there like that, those two little words, all alone on this page, all fragile and solid and unmoving. I couldn't bear it .

Words have weight, ya'll. And words that hold loss like that? Those are the heaviest of all.

So, I crossed them out, as if crossing out words on a screen makes any of it any less real.

Whatever, I tell myself as I type this, it makes it more bearable in this moment. In this first moment of trying to do what I have not been able to fathom doing, crossing the words out makes it possible to keep going.

[Sometimes, I'm pretty sure that's what grief asks of us, to find a way to bear the moment. Just this one. Only this one. We’ll get to the next one in a minute. One thing at a time.]

~~~

I can't believe I did it.

I think maybe typing was removed enough, just barely, so I could finally do it.

The idea of handwriting? On the page of that journal, where the writing stopped suddenly that day? Where the trail of ink marks the moment in time before I knew and then all that came after.

When I sank to the ground, back hard against dark green velvet. When I punched the concrete floor with both fists, some sort of strangled keening wail released from what felt like my chest but was really the center of the earth. When I grappled with making sense of the senseless while the fucking world spun out. When I rocked like a baby, like a wild thing, prayer flag whipping in a hurricane.

Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. No.

To write that on paper, in the book that holds all the truest truths, with nothing between me and this one particular truth but the glide of ink on paper?

I still don't know how to do it. To write it like that. To lay it down and make it real.
I've practiced it in my head. In somatic therapy sessions. In my sleep.. I’ve opened the journal. Sat there with the same pen and the same ink and that fucking blank page.

But I have not been able to write.

To write in my journal I would have to say that she died.

With my own bare hands.
I would have to write it with my heart.
I would have to let my body know it as irrevocable truth.

I'm not ready.
I cannot write that she died.
Therefore, I cannot write.
Therefore, I have not written.

This is the story that lived until tonight.

~~~

I already tried once up there. Got closer than I have so far.
I think maybe, before I’m done here tonight, I can let the words stay on the page.
Maybe not erase or strikethrough or close my eyes.
Maybe I can write those words, right here with you, and read them and not stop breathing.

It feels more possible with this keyboard. With a screen between me and all the rest of the world. Maybe that’s just removed enough to make it possible

But that's not really it, is it? I ask this in real-time conversation with myself, actively in process even as all of this rolls out from heart, to fingers, to the screen, to the cloud, to you.

Truth be told, it's not typing that's removed. It's me.

Tonight, I am dialed back/shut down/turned off enough because of Other Things In The Rest Of Life That Make Me Feel Too Much.

[Oh life, and its relentless insistence on Other Things when there were already more than enough Original Things. Bullshittery is what it is].

But sometimes, paradoxically, disconnect offers space to bring things together. And so it is tonight. And in whatever weird spaciousness arose from unplugging I found myself here, all rambling stream of consciousness and digital cross-outs, trying to do the thing I need to do. Trusting you to somehow get it, the way you always seem to do.

~~~

Yes, there is still force involved. It’s not like this suddenly came easy. I’m locked in an internal push against a big black ball of clay, coal, concrete grief-denial-devastation that has lodged itself hard in my solar plexus all these months. A lowly human/writer with the Sisyphusean task of trying to lift two very heavy words up an endless hill of grief.

No, I didn't disconnect my way through a magical window and come in here and sit down and do this with any sort of speed or ease. As clumsy and awkward as it is, you might believe this was a spur of the moment, all spontaneity and seizing the day, words tumbling out too fast to be contained.

No, I have been planning and circling the cage and talking myself into it all night,
all day,
all week,
all month,
Honestly, I have been talking myself into this since July 16th.

But tonight there was disconnect. Distance. Humanity switch a little bit flipped*. And before I knew it I stopped talking myself out of it.

[*it’s a TVD reference. If you know, you know]

Whatever it is that happened tonight offered just a sliver of space between me and the endlessness of all that feeling. Just enough to grasp the red thread that’s been trailing from the center of my chest for months and tug on it.

~~~

So, I wrote tonight, finally.
You saw that, right?
I thought it would crack me open.
Truth be told, I'm not feeling much.
If I did, I couldn’t have done it.

That's not true. I’m just pretending it is. If I stop typing long enough to think feel, I'd know that I want to puke/cry/sink into the earth. It is just easier to keep pretending until I get to the end of this thing.

[It’s funny how we can write over our own knowing so easily and only catch it when we pause and feel the lie. It’s become harder and harder lately, to keep my body from calling itself out on it’s own lies. In some circles I hear they call this healing.]

But listen, feelings or not, I need you to see that I wrote the words.

~~~

I had to do it somehow. You see, I have yet to figure out how to place another word on another page without laying those two words down first.

Oh, I've tried to make deals with the devil, the muse, my own common sense. Logically, I do not have to write this before I can write anything else. Logically, I can write anything I want whenever I want.

But logic has no pull in the land of grief. Grief fucks hard with good, clean, common sense and lays it down in the gravel; all bloody knees and missing teeth. Neat and tidy logic has no jurisdiction here.

And it was that messy fucker grief who told me this must be written before any of the rest. I’ve spent this whole time (and goddess knows how many poorly constructed sentences) working up the guts to try and do it.

So here it goes—no cross-outs, strikethroughs, or takebacks—just the whole story.

She died, loves.
She died.

FUCK

fuck.


~~~

I somehow wish I could make that first fuck all huge on your screens. It would be the biggest, boldest, largest FUCK you have ever seen in your entire life. It would cover your entire computer and spill off the sides, echoing into space. Full caps, full guns, angry as hell.

And then the fuck immediately after that, well, she would nestle right up to the big one, except in the tiniest little subscript you could possibly imagine. So small you could hardly perceive it, let alone see it. She’s small and sad and lost, diminutive to the extreme, shrinking into her own shadow..

I think if you saw those two fucks superimposed like that, the way I see them in my head and feel them in my body, you would touch your own unfathomable well of grief, and you would nod and go, yes, yes, it does feel like that.

This endless pit of loss is exactly like the most enormous, angry, obnoxious billboard display font of a FUCK screamed right into the abyss, you’d nod, all ragged breath and desperation. And it sits right next to the tiniest, most fragile little fuck imaginable, one so small you'd need a microscope to read it. One that can barely speak its name above an almost inaudible whisper.

Sometimes they lean on each other, those fucks, put their arms around each other and breathe, you know. All they’ve got is each other. That’s all we’ve got too, come to think.

The fact that I can type this craziness—which may sound ridiculous to a whole lot of people who are not you and therefore not in the habit of getting things that matter—but I know you'll get it.

And that's why I had to do this, you see. Because of you. And me. And the thing that happens—the straight up miracle of it—when we’re both here at the same damn time.

The fact that you'll understand what I just typed is why I had to push the fucking boulder up the hill over and over until this was done. You know that, don't you?

Yes, I knew you would. It’s always been like that with us.

~~~

The thing is, any writer who has done her time in the trenches knows that sometimes there is one story that pushes ahead of all the others. She cuts the line and sits herself down right at the front, all brazen and entitled. She makes it known that the muse will only be granted entrance if she is first given her due. Until then, that damn muse and all the rest of the art you might have gotten yourself into can fuck right off.

All the other stories? They know not to mess with the line cutter. They know she means business, needs something, knows something they don't.

They know that no matter how they clamber and beg, what kind of cacophony they raise, not a damn one will get their day until the writer can make herself look the stubborn, relentless, determined story dead in the eye and give her what she needs.

A vehicle. An outlet. A voice.

~~~

It will be five months this weekend since she died. (She died. She died. She died). And I still somehow believe that maybe if I don't write it with my hands on the page of my journal there is a sliver of this existence where reality is different than it is here.

That lie? Well, that’s between me and the page and my writer's blood ink and the energy of Kali that lingers where I last wrote.

But I had to start somewhere. I had to start here. With this screen and these words. And with you. We’ve been doing this thing together for a long time now. Of course it had to be with you.

~~~

Whenever I sit down and even think about writing, she is staring back at me, blue eyes holding all the knowing of all the universes that ever were or will be, looking straight into my soul.

“Do right by me”, she says. “Do right by my story. I'm counting on you”

I look back at her. Nod. Exhale.

“I know”, I say. “I know”.

“I promise. I will”.