If I started writing about grief, I’d never stop. There is no limit.
Lost buttons, lost sunglasses.
Lost pets.
Lost opportunities, lost dreams.
Lost love.
Lost hopes, lost initiative.
Lost friends.
Loss.
The mound nearly insurmountable. Looming higher with every passing second. Every road not taken, every insignificant choice that dropped another shovel of dirt onto the pile.
Perhaps it’s more of a slow volcano. A constant bubbling of magma that builds upon itself even as the next bubble bursts forth. Stretching ever higher, unevenly growing as rivulets dig their way through older tracks. Ripping healed wounds back open as molten liquid rushes on.
Loss beyond what can be turned into a gain. Into a net positive. Impossible to turn into an asset rather than a deficit.
And isn’t that what all writing does anyway? Attempt the impossible by trying to keep a feeling, a thought, a whim from being lost. Retain what should dissipate. What is temporary and ephemeral.
Studies show that the human brain is wired to dwell on the harsh, painful experiences it accumulates. It uses them to show us what choices not to make again. It tries to keep us from compounding grief. Keep us from losing anything else that it thinks we can’t live without.
The flip side is that holding onto joy is all the more difficult. We allow it to flit away. Perceiving it as merely a momentary relief from real life. The sun passing behind the omnipresent clouds.
So we write. We force words to hold that existential misdirection that pulls at us daily. Knowing, even if we don’t say as much, that nothing we say or do can stop the loss from piling up. Stop the grief from consuming more of the fertile valley below.
We write hoping that some combination of words will speak from our souls to the readers’. Giving us both a moment of mutual recognition. Of feeling like our grief is manageable because it is seen. Because we are not alone.
Even as grief screams that we are.
Melissa Proulx | Author 