For whenever you may need this
Photo by (Negative Space / Pexels)
Written by Kimaya Diggs
To Kimaya — for whenever you may need this. Love, Kimaya.
This is written on the front flyleaf of a book called “Mourning Songs: Poems of Sorrow and Beauty.” It’s a collection of poems curated by Grace Schulman that addresses grief. The book is divided into themes: For the Beloved, The Shape of Death, Talking to Grief, End of Days. I bought it for myself from the bookstore I haunted as a child.
My friend’s mother was dying. During the pandemic, she had been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease that was progressing at a relentless pace. I bought the book so that I would have something to say when she was gone. It is a small book, maybe 4 inches by 6, with a textured navy-blue cover embossed with white Japanese chrysanthemums.
For whenever you may need this. I inscribe every book I buy with a love note to myself. This one is a reminder to be soft and to be generous with these words for the grieving.
This is how I love myself, for the world is absolutely brimming with loss. The mothers that my friends have lost during this year alone could fill a room. This is how I love myself, knowing that my mother will one day step into that room and join all the mothers who died before her. This is how I love myself when my husband is able to reach out and place his hand on the bumper of the car that barely stopped in time, in the exact place where a woman had been hit and killed just a week before. This is how I love myself when the enormity of loss threatens to burst my body at the seams and leave it deflated.
I had an expansive mind as a child. I spent much of my time talking to myself out loud, holding conversations in which the other person always said the right thing. Kimaya, you’re so smart. You’re so interesting! You’re so thoughtful, such a hard worker. I whispered my little world into existence, waiting for someone outside of my imagination to say these words to me, to make them solid and real.
But the right people never say the right things. It’s always the right people saying the wrong things, or worse, the wrong people saying the right things. Sometimes it’s just all wrong and the things they say make the inside of your mouth taste like blood. Sometimes the world you build for yourself crumbles and you see yourself as a pale, naked snail flattening itself against a crack in the sidewalk as footsteps shake the earth around you. Sometimes the hurt that other people carry reveals itself as the foot that grinds you into the dirt. Sometimes, maybe worst of all, the people whom you most want to hear say the right things are gone — dead, distant, estranged, transformed, unrecognizable —
And there is always more to lose. There is always, always more to lose.
For whenever you may need this.
When I get hurt, I talk to myself. It’s okay, baby. You’re ok, you can do this, I say to myself. If I don’t speak gently to myself, who will?
How do we love ourselves? Let me count the ways: some people go on long runs or dress nicely. Comb their hair with rose oil, go to therapy. Spend time making the nicest cup of tea. Build something. Break something. Let it go, hold it all in and grow. Some people smile at themselves in the mirror. Others of us write love notes to ourselves in the front flyleaf of every book we buy. It’s all the same thing: a practice of the brain observing itself and deciding that this earthly experience is worth something.
The feeling doesn’t always last. I need it written down for the moments when the grief of being begins to fill my lungs. I need it written down for the moments when I cannot believe that I ever loved myself. For the times that my joy is too distant to remember. These words wait. For whenever I may need them.
To Kimaya — for whenever you may need this. Love, Kimaya.
Love, Kimaya
