Grief is a strange thing.

Ruminations ❧ Letter 2

What a beautifully sorrowful month it has been.

i.

Who knew getting older

would mean placing love

in abstractions, those that

are here, but not here?

For the majority of my life, I’ve leaned more into nihilistic streams of thought. When faced with any given situation, I could quite easily point out what was wrong, out of place, or bad. I revelled in finding grime on the underbelly of perfectly lovely things, and found pleasure in going, “See! Nothing is truly good”.

The poems I wrote in my teen years were, thus, appropriately bleak (is now a good time to mention my Edgar Allen Poe obsession?). Many of them can be found in the first half of Worm Food and Bone Sand, leaching despair and teenage angst into its A5 pages. Like many teenagers suffering from depression and a distorted sense of self, I became a bit of a buzzkill. I was moody, isolated, bitter, and not at all open to the idea that the world and life itself could be anything more than a cruel joke. I’d created a suffocating internal world and found no joy in my external one. 

In my youth, the relationship grief and I shared was immature. Pain and sadness were driving forces for self-pity and isolation, and love took the backseat.

pg 9 in an 1885 publication of Edgar Allan Poe's Lenore, by Henry Sandham

This month, I uttered forever goodbyes to a family member and a beloved pet. 

Kissed both on the forehead.

Whispered thank you.

Whispered buh-bye.

Grief as an adult feels far more complex. Where once it was solely personal, it now feels communal, tangential, relative.

My grief is my partner’s grief is my mother’s grief is my sister’s grief is my future grief…

I understand it now as a force driven by love.

ii.

Grief is a strange thing.

It renders crystalline

all the parts that hurt

with scalpel-edged intention,

the precision a stinging blessing.

.

But deeper still, it reaches:

wound beds are torn with

sullen sensibility, and memories

dredged without thought

for scabs or scars.

May 19th marked 7 years since falling in love with my high-school sweetheart and slowly cracking my heart open inch by crimson inch.

Many things changed in those seven years, but of note, I:

• faced the depths of my despair;

• became so incredibly vulnerable that I felt I could never be loved;

• learned that vulnerability was the only reason anyone ever loves anything;

• grew out of my pessimistic angst (somewhat); and,

• began seeing the world in colour again.

Daring to love in a world that is often incredibly harsh became my most significant act of personal rebellion. Hating is easy by comparison and is why the world’s underbelly is grimy to begin with. This glorious orb is a paradise, but not a utopia. 

My relationship with grief has matured into a deep, earnest knowing. Now, it holds my hand as we both contemplate the hole that’s been left behind together. I am no stranger to tear-stained cheeks and used to consider my sensitivity a curse, but the truth is as Tolstoy once said:

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

‘Oak Fractured by Lightning’ by Maxim Vorobiev, 1842

The written word is grief and love immortalised.

It doesn’t matter if I am driven by intense rage, unabashed desire, unfounded joy, or ubiquitous dread, I have always turned to writing as my confessional. The page holds no prejudices and rests, palms open, ready to receive whatever I have to offer.

Words, in turn, have the uncanny ability to say so much and yet almost nothing at all (a peculiarity I’ve leant on considerably these past few weeks). I’ve found rest in the comfort of familiar letters and stringing them along like ghosts; consciously crafted emotional hauntings. Despite my ever-transitional reality, the words I impart on paper or screen become acutely rooted to the moment they are borne. As such, they’ve become placeholders for my sadness, and check-points of my love.

And for that alone, I am grateful.

iii.

What is grief, if not

an outpouring of love?

…

Thank you for sharing this placeholder with me <3

Your mailbox ghost,

C. Ellis xx

❧

P.S. By the time you receive this letter, I’ll be gliding at top speed somewhere above the Indian Ocean, near-empty suitcase in tow. Who knows what treasures I’ll find on my adventures? Stay tuned for Italian field notes my lovelies!! ~