|
esskay
Digital storyteller, Photographic narrator, Hogwarts alum. In real life, I write things. I speak fluent sarcasm. I'm unintentionally funny. My favorite thing is food. Guac is life. I'm a fountain of the most random information. I'm pretty, only because it's weird to call oneself beautiful. I'm weird in all the good ways. I live in the greatest city on Earth. I was Sasha before Beyonce was schizophrenic. My life is stranger than fiction. But please, don't take my word for it. My pen is mightier than my sword. Instagram
agenda
musings
twitter
Tweets by @SaKePi
Banners
 blogwalk
|Alex|
|DS|
|Zoella|
|Meghan|
|CurlBox|
|Cass|
|TiKeDi|
|The Read|
|Infatuation|
|Negin| |
Thursday, October 18, 2012 || 10:05 AM
Sometimes, I feel like trying to get the truth out of people is like pulling teeth. It's especially awkward when the tooth in question is loose and bloody and wobbly...just spit it out already! Or, if you'd prefer, I can smack it out of your mouth, like my late brother did to me. God, I really miss him. I realize this has the potential to get all angry and rant-y but I made promises so...no. Instead, I'll tell you guys that story because it's cute and fun and brings back goodish memories.One Saturday a long time ago, when the sun had set and the Sabbath had ended, I was wandering around church. My mom had to stick around for choir practice so my brothers and I were all off doing whatever it was we did after church back then. I was about 6 or 7 at the time, whatever the hell age baby teeth are in the process of falling out and I had one in the front of my mouth that was literally dangling by a thread. And though my brothers begged to let them pull it, I wouldn't let anyone near it because I was such a punk back then. So I walk into a room where my late brother was playing cards with his friends and I walk around the table and then over to his girlfriend at the time and tell her his entire hand (don't judge me. I was 7 years old, universal age where kids get simultaneously ugly and annoying). So she, decent person that she was and still is, says they have to start over. My brother however, got up and came over to me in that half angry, half laughing way he had, and slaps me so hard, my tooth flies out of my mouth. If I was laughing before he slapped me, I was cracking the hell up afterward. And everyone kept staring at me all weird and I couldn't understand why they weren't laughing until my brother said "uhh Sasha? I slapped the tooth out of your mouth." Then of course, the tears came even though I didn't feel a thing and everyone else started laughing. Moral of this story: whether it be tooth or truth, spit it out before someone slaps it out of your mouth. These memories and stories and all the stupid and not so stupid shit he taught me makes me miss him even more. As we approach the "holliest jolliest" time of year, more of these little things just keep popping into my head. But I read something really relevant this morning by my favorite poet, Alysia Harris. Real talk, all poems aside, I have spent the whole of my twenties so far trying to understand grief. This grief involves others. It involved their joy. It involved my faith. It involved my art and the way we go about making myths of our own lives. How does someone who we once knew so well become a legend to us? First they become a memory. But before memory, they were a mystery, something we didn't quite understand. And not because of anything intrinsic about them but because of the unraveling of our identities when around them. And so they became a lens through which we understood self. When we experience loss, we think we become less. I thought I became less but this was a dream. I became deep. The depth of my humanity was further hollowed out. At first you feel this depth with what is most easy: desire for the thing lost. But you don't yet understand. You must go deeper. You must explain the chemistry of your inconceivable life, how you believed your handfuls of coal were diamonds. And still, you must go deeper. Deeper through the planes of your soul, of all your motives and all your selves. THIS IS GRIEF. You do not see the sun, or if you do, you do not mention it for the place you are going has a second sun. It has taken me a little less than three years to arrive here. To understand the celestial geography of the internal. To understand the orbit of all my little stars. Only now, once I've drawn and redrawn the maps, done the calculations and am sure, can I begin the process of recreation. Only now can I move the heaven and earth inside me. As for me, I'm still getting there. For the full version of her theology of grieving, visit her Tumblr page. Labels: friends and fam, personals, real life amazing |