There are times when I start to write a post or create a new art project and I get stuck. Suddenly, every idea I have and every mark I make or word I type is wrong. Wrong, stupid, vapid, empty, annoying, pandering, arrogant, contrived. I annoy myself. I disgustmyself. I decide that I will not be able to write anything helpful. I will not be able…
Cassie Dietz
Loss
I was stuck for ideas the other day in art class and the teacher was trying to help me brainstorm. Make it autobiographical, he said, in his cheery 20-something voice, about the movie poster I was assigned to create.Autobiographical? I thought. Huh. Yeah. I began to sort through my life events. Lost my mom (and my dad, too, if we’re talking…
Anam Cara
There are women who have taken care of me since Dave got sick. Just about everything I’ve learned about love and devotion I’ve learned from them. Dave’s death cut the cord keeping me upright on this planet and as I fell, fell, fell, unable to stop the falling, unable to breathe, they cradled me. In every sense of the words, cradled me. In…
Clean or Dirty
Something I’ve begun to distinguish since Dave died is clean pain versus dirty pain. I can’t remember the original source of this idea, though I’ve read about the concept several different times. Clean pain is the pain we feel when we lose someone or something we love dearly. It’s the pain we naturally feel when we’re ripped from…
Dark and Hidden
I am honest on this blog in that I don’t lie about anything I write. Ever. But I don’t shareabout everything here. I don’t talk about the problems in my marriage with Dave and I don’t talk much about my dating life now. There are some things I just don’t want to write about here. But what would it be like if we all had a moment or a day or a week…