Diary: 2.27.23

Somehow tragedy has both leant a sense of urgency to my work and stifled it at the same time.  There’s only so many ways to write about my dead mother, after all.  That’s not to say the subject hasn’t been prolific. I’ve written poem upon dreadful poem about how “sad” I am and what “grief” means and how I’ve allowed years of my life to be “stolen.”  I don’t know.  I’m not trying to belittle my own feelings, but at the same time…we get it. It reminds me of a line from one of my favorite Kesha songs.

"We get it that you've been through a lot of s***

But life's a b****, so come on, shake your tits and f*** it" 

Simply put, yeah? My newest WIP essay really focuses on this issue—the concept of living with our grief instead of just waiting for it to pass. Learning to make the most of our cohabitation. What this means for me, practically, is simple: I need to learn to rediscover the spectrum of nuance in my writing. I’m hitting one note really well, all the time, but one note does not a symphony make.  A dirge? Maybe. But not a symphony.  Anyways, all this is to say: I’m working on it.

-xx