Good Grief (Girl)

on dead cats, good women, lost love, and the stuff in between

I keep trying to be good. I keep trying to make my writing good. It’s an absolutely perfect place to start if you want to not write at all. I talk to artists all day about why they cannot write, what inside them cannot move the needle. It goes something like “laziness” or “time” or “i don’t know why I cant just… INSERT VERY COMPLICATED TASK HERE”. We simplify our “inability” to show up as something we are lacking. Not the external circumstances it almost always is.

I’ve certainly got methods and space to figure out how to move the needle. But I am not here to claim some kind of guru status. Some kind of faith in something better. I don’t have a potion or a trick. But I have getting out of my own way.

My goodness is wrapped in the performance of goodness. Of the things I have been told I am valuable for. My smile, my usefulness, my willing to make do, or trying, my eyes and the way I brushed my hair that day, my output for capitalism and the value I bring to the rooms I walk into. I am new to being likeable, though, I have enough evidence that the me that came naked into this world was not desired. I have become incredible at shapeshifting, elasticating to what you need me to be.

But I am tired. And when I am tired I cannot perform good. I have no good left to give inside me. Unable to find the threads to pull to weave myself together. Stitch up the seams where the stuffing falls out and dance pretty, fuck pretty or hold myself upright in front of the class.

My cat is sick. My geriatric cat has been sick since basically the day we got her. I picked out the cat that had been at the shelter for a long time, the cat that had been traumatized to hell, rejected multiple times, passed from shelter to foster to hoarding to shelter, lost her teeth and vision, and was told she wouldn’t live “past a couple of years”. A couple of years turned into 8 years. I don’t have a sweet lesson from Anjelica to offer, not anything new. There is the lesson in going slow, laying in sunbeams just because it’s a little bit warmer. There is screaming when you need something (food) and asking for a cuddle by placing your head in the hands of the person you wish to receive love from, sometimes to annoying degree.

Life seems to happen all at once. And then never again. A lesson I am constantly trying to remember but feel endlessly shocked by when it slaps me wet in the face. It’s spash back reminds me I am at least alive enough to feel the sting.

Grief pummels me. Pulls me down into a pit of myself where I meet the real me. The shrivled pieces of fetal materials, the gooey center where I am nothing, really, but a clump of cells, messed into flesh and blood. The me that existed before the rest of my body. The me that flashed positive on my mothers pregnancy test. Here I am something ugly tucked under the soil, pulled underground. My nerve endings wound tightly together around my muscles to bring me back, underground. Something to figner through the dirt, pull out of a clump, whisper ew, take a picture, text a friend, toss me back in the heap.

Grief makes me reach for sensation. Waving my arms around out into the dark for anything else that can save me from the drawing inside myself. A fuck or at least a cry. Something full bodied, all consuming. Something to rub, something just to feel.

Grief hits me like a bruise where I can walk to the cafe and only slightly brush up against the sight and smell of mellow creme pumpkin candies and have my purple bruise sting and stab me. A day derailed back into myself. Back underground.  

If feels silly in a way to grieve a living creature. Something that knows me as the women that cracks the cans of fancy feast, pulls her back from the edge of a porch or disrupter of perfect cozy spot to kick her off a pillow. But in all my grief, it pulls me back into the pool. A slush of every sadness my gooey centre feels. Dark mirror surface waters and hands reaching to pulling me in. The grief of people that loved me, their love no longer present in the world. Grief of where to put all my love for the people no longer here. Grief for lost glances and lives lived inside those lingering stares on the bus. Grief for who I was or who I was supposed to be or whatever I am supposed to feel about time. Grief for the squirrels, ground up into the side of the road, tail missing, organs and fat mixed into leaves where I pretend I do not care but actually I really fucking care. Grief for the photos of war on my phone never to photos of brunch.

It asks me if I am grieving correctly. Constantly checking my performance of good enough women. As life long weird girl I am no stranger to crying in the park, the trail, pulled over at the side of the road sobbing or in line at the grocery store. I am constantly shocked by my human bodies reactions to anything. Grief feels shocking to experience inside myself, as if I forgot I could feel in the first place. So much numbing of that gooey centre.

I don’t have a trick for goodness. I have walking, I have time. I have removing myself from the centre and feeling, actually feeling and words that only try to capture any love I have ever felt. So I feel it.

xx

Phoebe

*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸‍♀️(and also like, don’t be an ableist freak🥰)

Thanks for reading the Weird Girl.Here I write about being an artist, human, angry woman on the internet and breaking up with the wellness industrial complex. If what I say here inspires you (or pisses you off 🥰) share my work with the group chat, or your best friends neighbour. Word of mouth is the most special and radical way of sharing 👼