Dec 18, 2020
A Year Without an Ending
Is it strange, in a vortex of absence, to cherish endings? Only if loss and endings are the same.
Jess Zimmerman is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature. Her essays and opinion writing have appeared in the Guardian, the New Republic, Slate, Hazlitt, Catapult, and others. Her book Women and Other Monsters, on feminism and mythological creatures, is forthcoming in March 2021.
Is it strange, in a vortex of absence, to cherish endings? Only if loss and endings are the same.
What if we thought of emotional trauma the way we do physical: as a wide class of wounds whose healing is unpredictable, whose scars take different forms?
“Our anger exists to scourge the world, and to save it. Not everyone wants it saved.”
“Most cultures have a female monster who preys on pregnant women and children. In ancient Greece, her name was Lamia.”
“When you’ve spent all your life smothering your contradictions, their eruption can undo you.”
“Medusa’s ugliness grew and grew, becoming something greater than herself but still part of her legend.”
“It’s not that we don’t remember what it was like before the sound. If you asked us, we could tell you.”
“When women grab for space men thought reserved for their use alone, those men will surely call us foul.”
“Someday he’ll meet a fate I didn’t think of, and that will be my fault, too.”
“I can’t zoom in far enough to see if we were happy, or sad, or changing, or lying to ourselves.”
