Words Words

I don’t say a lot about it publicly, but I’m still in grief. My family is still in grief. Just before Kechi and I got married, I traveled back to my home town of Columbia, MD for the first time since my brother’s death. I used to hate going back there. I used to feel that the only value to the place was that my family is there. I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m tempted to say that I don’t know what changed, but of course I do. It’s me.

I have more of what I want out of life, I’m more comfortable with myself than I’ve ever been. Going back there knowing I was about to get married, knowing I was about to interview my friend Ronnie Virdi at a very cool book store in DC, knowing that in just four days, I would fly back to the city I chose, that chose me—not to mention the drastic change for the better in my own health—all of that helped combat the feeling of helplessness, the feeling of permanent injury I used to feel every time I went back, even if at a remove.

I refer to Brandon MacDonald as my brother for a few reasons. First of all, it’s accurate. We spent our formative years in the same place, surrounded by the same people. Add to that that we literally decided to be brothers soon after we met at five and eight years old. Another reason is that it’s easier. It cuts through the necessity to explain to people that, while, yes, we have different parents, that our life experience and decisions cut through all that to bind us together—including the fact that after having two separate dream visions in the same night, we resolved to move to New Orleans together and that it permanently altered the course of our lives—I couldn’t have loved him more if he’d been my own flesh and blood. The same goes for his mother, his younger siblings, and the wife who survived him.

I’m writing a series of letters to all of them. I haven’t written a proper letter in years, but during my trip home it struck me as the exact right thing to do. I used to write letters to a girl I dug way back in my early twenties, and she used to complain about my giving them to her typed. At least for the first letter I’m working on, I drafted it on the computer, and then I’m revising as I copy it down longhand. It’s a painstaking process, but it feels right. It feels healthy. I might do the others this way, too.

 Why am I writing about this now, and why am I posting it here to this blog instead of to my Patreon? I probably still have more readers here than I do over there, and besides, this has so little to do with work—although it is also pretty closely related to the fiction I’ve been writing, the poetry, and the poetry collection I’ll be assembling once I turn in the novel draft at the end of this year. I’m writing these letters because the labor helps me make sense of myself even if I don’t fully understand the circumstances of my life or the emotions attached to it. I’m writing them because the best way I know to process difficult things is on the page. I’m writing them because I find myself in an undiscovered country. So many things have happened in the past year and change that I never thought possible. I’ve found out that, yes, actually, I can successfully take back control of my health and my body. Yes, actually, I can dedicate myself to another person. Yes, actually, I can make room in my life for the things, the people, the projects most important to me. Yes, I can write multiple blog entries in a day.

 Okay, I’ll close this out in a moment, but one thing that I feel I need to point out is that there was a time when my eating, my bingeing especially was tied to my most difficult emotions. There have been times when the fact of my brother’s death makes me feel like I’m lying on a bed of hot coals, being just roasted by implacable grief. Somehow in all that, not only have I managed to keep from gaining back any of the weight I’ve lost over the past year, I’ve actually continued to stay active, to eat sensibly, and lose it. When I think about it, that still feels like high fuckin fantasy to me, and I just have to shake my head in wonder.

 Anyhow, that’s enough out of me. Don’t think I’ll make a habit of posting this frequently going forward. I have short stories, poems, and a novel to write, you animals!

 Also, I love you, so thanks for reading.

P. S.: Ronnie Virdi is just one of the biggest sweathearts in the writing biz.