Grief and Relief: Letting Yourself Breathe Again

On reinventing yourself in the wake of destruction.

Today, I threw away all of my old notebooks.

These notebooks spanned a decade of my life, encompassing every phase and experience that had shaped my present form. Each one had been painstakingly decorated or inscribed with quotes. Each one was brimming with stories and sketches that reflected my years of fastidious study of my crafts and my blossoming creativity. Each one was unique and indisputably mine. And each one was tossed out--almost two hundred notebooks and journals, pushed down the open throat of a garbage bag and set aside with the rest of the detritus I had gutted my room of in the past hour.

This might seem like a heedless decision, especially given my love of measuring my progress as a writer and my general sentimentality. After all, even though the notebooks were basically unnecessary, they were still special and emblematic of my hard work. Why would I just toss out years of writing? Why was I treating my past as if it was no more important than an old sweater or broken toy? After the blinding urge to clean, to bag all my clutter and usher it to the curb, finally abated, I felt a slight twinge of remorse--then a burst of relief. I felt unburdened and clean, like the old notebooks had been a shackle keeping me bound to my past. But why?

I knew why I had felt the sudden, intractable desire to clean out my entire room. In my grief, I had hoarded simple things, everyday items of no quantifiable value, and to hold onto these objects required space that I did not have. As I started cleaning in the attempt to free up some space, I realized that I didn't want to see relics of my past anymore, of my life before this horrible incident. I wanted to finally transition into the person I was now, even if that person was sad and frustrated and still justifiably angry at the world. In order to move on, I had to let go of some things to ease my passage. In order to hold onto her, I had to come to terms with my grief and acknowledge the fact that I would never be who I once was. In order to breathe again, I had to let go of the weight on my chest.

I haven't written much since the incident. Granted, I managed to churn out serviceable essays and responses for school after the initial, paralyzing shock had ebbed, but my creative endeavors were too peripatetic and empty to be of any interest to me. I lost interest in myself, in my own work. I read and reread things I had written as recent as the day before the incident, yet found myself not identifying with the author. That girl hadn't seen anything. She knew nothing of the shattering pain that periodically smashed into her with such force that she could do nothing but stare and wait for the ability to breathe to return. She didn't know the darkness or the regret or the rage. While I didn't want to subject her to this experience, I couldn't help but envy her ignorance. And I couldn't understand her anymore.

When I found those old notebooks, I felt so removed from them. I could scarcely recall the mindset of the little girl who had scrimped for quarters so she could buy one-subject notebooks at the student store or the middle school girl who had invented whole literary worlds within the pages of a purple journal. But as I glanced through their contents, I remembered this girl's passion for writing, how it had carried her through the minor struggles of her young life. She had been resilient, determined, loving. She had written unapologetically. Though I wanted to move on, I realized that the only way I could accomplish this was to retain that core of passion. My writing didn't have to be especially good or polished--I just had to go back to my roots. I just had to write.

It was only after trashing these journals that I was able to return to this blog and write without that dread hovering over me. I recognize the girl writing these words. Her prose is laced with pain and promise. She isn't afraid of writing anymore. She isn't afraid of growing, of becoming someone new. She isn't afraid of leaving the past behind and learning how to live again.

I will never forget the incident, nor do I want to. That is a part of me that, like my passion, I never want to lose, as it informs me and everything that I do. What I do want to do is move on and continue writing as the person I am today, not as the person I was before. I want to fill up new notebooks and journals. I want to carry her with me wherever I go, letting her spirit and own affinity for writing inundate me and inspire rather than discourage me. She would have never wanted to keep me from my craft: this was the girl, after all, who encouraged me to buy expensive journals just because they were pretty and read my terrible stories at one am when I needed some advice. I love her still, but I will never be the girl I was when I knew her. Instead, I will grow into someone better, someone who has taken the pain and used it constructively. I will write. I will write. I will write.