Hope is Overrated; Grief is Underrated; and Other Popular Sentiments.

I’m thinking of a character in a book I’m writing about right now, and she’s hard to stay near but she draws me.  I know her.  I could be her in some ways–but no–I have what she doesn’t.  I have places to turn.  She doesn’t.

How can we let this happen, let people live without places to turn?  But we do it all the time, all over the world.

This character–she wants, she needs, she longs . . . for what’s irretrievably lost, for what she never had and can never had, for a ghostly idea of sublime unity and deliverance from self–through engulfment in a mother’s love or that of a dashing or paternal or godlike man, through religious or sexual ecstasy. . .
these things are not what they seem, and even if they are do not heal the wound or fill the achey emptiness. . .
the only way is to be held and drawn forth by supportive others/community and then to grieve and accept the emptiness for what it is, without expectation or hope of it disappearing. . .
(because I don’t know that it does disappear, not exactly)
she must find a way to do this, or die. . .

She doesn’t.  She can’t.  She dies.

Explore posts in the same categories: Change, Coping strategies, Depression, Fear, Grief, Literature, Living, Risk, Sadness, Social Experience, Writing, death, despair, loss, trauma

Tags: Change, choice, community, compassion, empathy, Grief, Literature, loss

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