Moments as quick as shoulder shrugs.
The hurt, something longer—like a hug.
The bad, the awful, cuts deep, but my gosh does it make for amazing inspiration. In my memoir class, story after story is about a suicide in the family, estranged relationships, alcoholism. I mean, life is teeming with tears, bruises, slaps and scars. The Icarus. The Edna Pontellier. The myths, the fiction, based in the most basic truth of life that there exists sadness, that there will always be falls. That death, like skin, is a guarantee in our existence.
Life would be immensely boring without fear and failure. If we don’t bleed, we don’t experience the world. Writers hold knives to their skin to seek their stories. We slice into ourselves, exposing the organs, plucking at them with game tweezers until we feel that buzz so familiar to childhood’s Operation. If only my heart could look so plastic. To be smooth like the arms of a Barbie doll. To feel nothing when you pull my arms from their grooved sockets, my hand in a constant grip despite the pull.
My advice? Use the bad times and make them words, full and fit and alive.
An on-the-spot poem about depression, alcoholism, and suicide:
Sad
Drink
Die
An on-the-spot poem about a sad thing that happened: