The Big One
The most personal thing I've ever shared here, originally written ten years ago
The truth is, behind the scenes, some hard things have been happening. I sometimes use this space to elaborate on my Person on the Internet stressors — and occasionally I’ll cryptically refer to family issues, but those are slow burns. A sudden change has occurred, and I've been doing what I always do when everything seems to go aflame — escape by plane to elsewhere. Years ago, it was Europe, which ushered me into a much better, but now concluding chapter. This time, I’ve run to LA, where a friend just moved.
(Always, my sense of hope lives in the Pacific Northwest, and I am about to share the story of why).
One thing I used to do that I haven’t done in years is write the pain out as a story. During my twenties, I aspired to be the kind of Sad Girl memoirist that so many women writers were encouraged to be by previous waves of feminism and the digitalized rise of the personal essay. I’m glad that I ditched that plan for reasons I’ll get into one day here — but it’s true that some of my best writing comes whenever I’m experiencing despair.
It is always a remix of the same sort of essay: Sad Girl wanders some new place. She has experienced recent loss and it is causing her to reflect on a loss from long ago. Maybe, just maybe, she is learning from that new place how not to give up all hope. (But she’s still sad, though.)
The best one of these, I penned in 2016. It was published by a now-defunct literary journal called Entropy in 2018. Back then, it was titled “Coastal Starlight,” but today I think it should be called “The Big One.”
I’ve mentioned it here a few times before, and many of you have asked me to share it. I’m amazed — and saddened — to be reunited with a dilemma similar to what I describe in this old piece, and am even more amazed and saddened that when I went to a movie with my friend last night, I saw one of the people mentioned in this story onscreen. I decided to dig it out and discover how rereading it would make me feel.
Here is “The Big One,” with photos and an epilogue on what happened to everyone involved:
