It is one year ago and we are still hugging our friends, still swaying en masse from subway poles, still stopping for golden-lit happy hours at outdoor cafes where we lick food from our fingers and laugh in each other’s faces and never disinfect our hands. On the evening of a day such as this, I write an email to a friend. I share my life, inquire about hers. I ask about her lover, her job, her health. We haven’t corresponded in months and so as I write there is a sense of stiff muscles warming. Only at the very end, when I feel sufficiently tender, do I say, I hope the writing is going well.
To an outsider, this statement might sound cold. Writers know it as anything but. When I say, I hope the writing is going well, I am saying, I hope you are able to access the truest part of yourself; I am saying, I hope you feel thrillingly alive to possibility; I am saying, I hope you feel human.
We come to the page when, turning back to face the mountain, we are far enough that we can finally discern the shape of it that was ungraspable from the peak. Then you can breathe and rest; then you can appreciate the loveliness of the moon, the syllable. You can take out your chisel and your hammer, which were never lost; you have all the time in the world to make, in miniature, a piece of art that captures the wilds of your grief. Until then, you are allowed to be tired, you are allowed to be footsore and heartsick, you are allowed to lay down your pen and focus on survival. I say to you, I hope the writing is going well. By which I mean:
Walking is writing. Crying is writing. Talking to a parent whose health you fear for is writing. Cooking is writing. Lying prostrate on the rug and watching sun stripe the wall is writing. Your lover’s hand on yours is writing. Your dog is writing. I have had years in which I could not see the shape of my life or string together a good sentence; and I have had a summer in which, three years late, the fog lifted in a different climate and suddenly I could write about my father. Don’t force the words. They will come, like old friends. You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles. If you are grieving, then I give you permission to write in the best way you can—which is to say, to live.
C. Pam Zhang, On Writing in a Time of Grief.
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