To be silent.

[bodlon]

Twelve days ago, one of my favorite people at my day job took his own life. I got word of his death nine days ago. His memorial service (which is a thing I am conflicted about) was this past Saturday.

Today was the first day I really talked about him, and my personal feelings of loss at his death, to anyone. Until today there just hasn’t been a right moment with the right people. Every other moment or person has been wrong.

I could not, for example, bring myself to stand in front of a group assembled in a Seventh Day Adventist Church and talk about the man who — with no prompting or difficulty — treated me like one of the guys from the get-go the second I came out, and how the thing I’ll miss most is fist-bumps in corridors or through car/truck windows. I couldn’t stomach the idea of trying to accept the comfort of someone who didn’t know him, or who needed me to explain how he was with people, or the way he tried so hard to do right by others.

So I held it, wrapped it up in a blanket until the right person and moment happened this morning. And I’m glad for that, because now that the first moment with someone who actually understands has happened, I’m able to say aloud that I will miss Bill fiercely. The world is poorer for losing him, and I’m sorry that he was suffering the way he was. I wish him all the peace he couldn’t find.

~*~

The timing, incidentally, is a peculiar thing. Now that I’ve said this I wonder how much the people who subscribe to Hold Something will think that part of January’s story came from this. The fact is that none of it did. By the time word got to me of what had happened the story was already in edits. But I did send it out the day of the funeral and re-read it that day and decided it was still good in spite of everything.

~*~

Still, I worry sometimes about the coincidences. The way my mom went into the hospital when I started a story about a man who’d been recently orphaned (I have never resurrected a character’s parents so fast in my life), or the way my relationship ended while I was working on something in which the protagonist was recently single and raw over it. I worry about how deadlines and emergencies seem to roam in packs, like the time I had three essays due and ended up in urgent care because of fume inhalation.

The writing life is dangerous and strange, and sooner or later everything means something. Which can lead all kinds of uncomfortable and unintentionally hilarious places.

~*~

I’ve been making the first tentative steps toward working on a novella this week. It’s already getting into my head and under my skin and into my dreams. I’ve even ordered a new copy of a book that I’m currently reading for it because someone’s done an annotated version, and the little man in the basement¹ says I want that sort of thing.

–
¹ I mean this in the Richard McKenna sense. I do not make it my business to confine random, diminutive people in the space behind my furnace or anything.

~*~

This is where the links go.

- Help Send Teresa to Gally. She’s one of the authors in the new Whedonistas anthology (which I haven’t read yet, but is by all accounts pretty damn rockin’), and the book launch is at the convention. Chapbook sales and donations will help her attend.

- Leslie Feinberg speaks out about a story that gets it all wrong.

- It looks like SyFy is commissioning a Red Faction movie with Gareth David-Lloyd in it. All I can think is that at least Uwe Boll isn’t involved.

- Is it me or is “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha the best song for fanvids ever? No, really. “Don’t stop, make it pop” indeed.

- Spotted this shop in a post on a crowdfunding comm and thought a few folks who read this might be interested. It’s mainly beaded jewelry and glass pendants in various states of funky, chunky, and shiny.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

Comments

[pocketmouse]

I am no good at this, but have some hugs anyway.

You've mentioned the writing coincidences thing before, and while my brain is whispering 'confirmation bias,' I also suggest writing more stories about winning the lottery and happy puppies and winning marathons.

[bodlon]

My brain whispers the same thing -- especially because we're doing material about that in Philosophy right now -- but sometimes it's downright eerie.

Pattern matching primates, man. We've got reality issues. Pass the bananas.

Also, thank you for the hugs. I am, I think, in the "wants hugs" stage of grief now.

[brewsternorth]

*adds to stock of hugs*

Pattern matching primates, man. We've got reality issues. Pass the bananas.

Heh, reminds me of my recent catch-up with the Guardian's Science Weekly podcast, rather an interesting romp through the world of science: anyway, one of the episodes explicitly mentioned that whole idea of pattern-matching and how much good it does or doesn't do humanity as a whole when we're trying to do science. Or the whole human thing in general.

[bodlon]

We are imperfect, irrational instruments. On the other hand, we're kind of fun to play. :)

*accepts hugs*

[pocketmouse]

I always hated pattern matching, especially when it came to logic puzzles, when I was a kid. I was always like 'three is not enough of a sample to establish what might happen next in a system!' Except, uh, in words a six-year-old me would know.

Always got plenty of hugs. *hugs*

[sanginmychains]

Oh man, I'm sorry. That's hard. You're facing a lot of changes and losses in your familiar places these days. Not to make the suicide all about you, but a loss is always about everyone who feels it, right?

[bodlon]

I worried about that with this post, actually. But you're right. If I'm writing about loss, I'm writing about myself experiencing it as much as I'm writing about the person lost.

(Depending on one's convictions, the matter of whether the other person is still in that equation is kind of an open question anyway. Funerals, as they say, are for the living.)

I think 2010 was a big shake-up year for the familiar places, but change doesn't really stop. I'm just...well, there are other changes I might have preferred to experience (and for Bill to have experienced, because damn, he deserved so much better than this).

*hug*

Thanks