marinating in sadness for the grief stew

on existential grief, the sweet reckoning with death, and accepting that we're all a little sad all of the time

1. i hope my death is a nice one

i hope my death (deep exhale if you’re holding your breath because spoiler alert: you’re going to die too, some day) is nice, not just for me in terms of a) without pain and b) with a warning, but also for those around me in that it’s a loving death¹.

a sweet, morbid, and hopeful piece that moves some tender bits in my heart:

For one particularly memorable assignment that semester, we had to write our own obituaries. Mine said, "Rest in peace to Courtney. She really, really didn't want to die." And it's true. When I lay awake in bed with some sort of weird, amorphous ache or when an ultrasound technician tells me I have a cyst I never felt growing on my ovary, I wonder what's going on in my body that I don't know about. I pray it's not something that will kill me. I don't want to die.

A memento mori for the anxious age

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2. cry with me and just hold my hand

some days all you need is an Ask Polly letter that reminds you to sit in silence, tells you it’s ok to want to say fuck you to the world, but still try to find connection because it is the light that keeps the world from descending into darkness, and maybe all you do today - and all it takes for now - is extending your hand.

The only thing we can do is sit down together in silence, until we trust each other, until we feel like explaining everything, until we let down our burden and let someone else carry it for a minute or two. The only thing you can do, after the year you’ve had, is try to believe that this ugly, messy, drowning feeling will pass. It will pass because you tried to believe it would pass. It will pass because you got out of bed and felt like shit but you took a shower anyway.

'I'm Overwhelmed With Grief!'

“you’re a complex planet”² :)

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3. to be a survivor, to live on, and to question

one of the most provocative pieces i’ve read in a while. about dying by suicide, and how those left behind, the ‘survivors’, make sense of it all. one may start with guilt about not having done enough to prevent something seemingly preventable, and may find themselves grappling with the ethical question of how one chooses to live (or not).

The crux of the issue with blanketing suicide as something that can be stopped is that it flattens one of the most confounding psychological, medical, and philosophical questions of being human into something simpler than its reality. Perhaps one day we will be able to say that, with the right blueprint, suicide is preventable. But we do not have the knowledge, let alone the resources, to make that true now.

CLICK HERE: The Problem with Saying Suicide is Preventable

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4. depression in the day to day is sooo ugly

there are some pieces you read and feel like they’ve been plagiarised from your soul (even though you wish you could even write 5% of how they have) and this one hits like a gut punch in just how utterly ugly, non redeeming, idiotic, and plain dull boring day to day depression can look like and in my tryst with this devil, i have learnt nothing because why the fuck should this be a teachable moment except that the only way out (or forward, depending on your optimism barometer) is to make friends with it³.

excerpt here, truly a banging piece below:

How to Date Your Sadness So It Doesn't Destroy You

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5. a little shake-you-by-your-shoulders moment

It is very tempting to believe that because you are twenty-something and struggling, the world is conspiring against you. But sometimes, the pain we feel in life is not from people holding us back, but our own inability to deal with their indifference. In other words: no one is out to get you. They just don’t care that much. This is both a little sad and hugely freeing.

More often, the pain we feel is due to our own lack of discipline, determination, and force of will. In “Goodbye to All That,” Didion states a simple, undeniable fact: our actions (and inactions) have consequences. She takes it a step further, actually: they all have consequences, every last one of them.

It is you against yourself

what do you mean i have to face the consequences of my actions???

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interlude meme therapy (we’ll talk about it another day):

until next time & new reads!

🌻

~ rufus

1. one of my all time fav books ‘Maybe You Should Talk To Someone’ has a beautifully done story arc of a terminally-ill patient planning her funeral party and i often think about how beautiful that is

2. say this to someone who’s struggling today <3

3. you can be friends with someone and still want distance :) you can do friendship, from afar :)