Let’s be real, here: grief sucks. It sucks so, so bad. On the list of Emotions That Are Hard To Deal With, grief is at the top, florescent and harsh and without a hint of remorse.
When you’re drowning in grief, it’s like the world stops, the air goes out, and all you can see and hear is the echoing of your own pain. Running from it is impossible, and it clings to you for much, much longer than it should. It grabs your neck and punches your heart and laughs while you shrink down onto the floor or collapse onto the bed; grief doesn’t give a shit.
Which is why it’s so hard to write when you’re not directly feeling it.
I know, I know, we can all pretend to remember what grief feels like and then put it down on paper, forcing our characters to live it, but honestly, unless we’re riding the salty, choking waves of grief itself, we’re just pretending – and therefore, faking it.
Some people are going to disagree with me, and that’s fine. Some people always disagree with me. But because I am, at this moment, standing under the deafening waterfall that is that awful word, it’s blindingly obvious to me that everything I wrote about grief when I was feeling fine, or even just “okay” – wasn’t real.
If we’re lucky, we’ll only experience grief a few times in our lives. And if we’re really lucky, we’ll have the presence of mind to write down exactly what we feel when we’re feeling it, so when it comes time to recreate that emotion on paper, we don’t settle for cliches and dramatic gestures. It’s impossible to truly do an emotion justice if we’re not in it at the moment, but having notes written when the wound was raw or the joy was heavenly will most certainly get us as close as possible.
That’s why I’ve been writing it all down. Even when I feel like puking. Even when my tears are ruining my make-up or I’m certain other people can hear me sob like a baby; I’m writing it down. Or taking mental notes on things like my posture, the descriptive phrases I’d use to explain how I’m feeling (“it’s like I’m a deer that just flew off the windshield of a truck,” “and now my mind has been possessed by the You’re Awful At Everything Monster“), or what it truly feels like to stare at a piece of cake, the most delicious food on the planet, and experience nothing but a blatant desire to throw it away.
I’m not wishing these feelings on you – believe me, there’s no way I could – but I am wishing that as a writer, you’re able to realize it’s your duty to get this sort of emotion right, even in the midst of the suckiest phase of your life. The better we can describe pain, happiness, love, grief, the better off society will be, because it’ll be impossible to feel alone during our time of need. If just one person can raise their hand and say, “I too, feel like a deer that was minding it’s own business one minute, and found itself hurled through the air by a 16-wheeler the next,” than I’ve done my job.
Grief can be a long, lonely train ride through the dead of night, but it doesn’t have to be isolating.
Not if we just tell the truth.
