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David Foster Wallace once wrote:
“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”
Though written in a work of fiction, knowing Wallace struggled with deep, paralyzing depression, and that he would go on to take his own life at age 46, these words hold a certain autobiographical sting to them.
As much as we think we understand suicide, who can know what one is truly going through before they “erase their own map,” another phrase Wallace repeatedly used to describe the self-elimination process. Who can understand the inner workings of a broken brain, a depleted and defeated soul, save it be one who has committed the act himself, and these are they who cannot speak out, for they are gone.
The above quote opens me up and makes me think about the things or people I've lost, things I've let go of, or things that have slipped out of my careless grip. Losing friends, losing my Grandma, just barely missing the chance to fall in love, the near-misses of life—looking back, a lot of it hurts. It hurts to let go and it hurts to be let go of, and still other times you don't want to let go, but your hands are bleeding and can’t hold on for another second, even though that’s all you want in the world in that moment. It’s like a poor mother that cannot feed her crying hungry children. It smashes her heart, but she just can’t do it. Sometimes we just can’t do it.
But what things have I left my claw marks on? I like to think I try my best and give it all with things I love, but when the colors start to fade and the screws come loose, and things start to fall apart and slip away, how fierce is my hold? How easily will I quit? Am I willing to scratch and claw to hold on, or is the pain, the wincing, the torn fingernails too much?
So I look at my hands. I know they’ve bled at times. I know they’ve been rough and smooth from both overuse and inaction.
And though I’ve never felt the cajoling demons of final and personal destruction, and the clouds above me have never been so black as to obscure all light and chance of hope, I’ve lost dear friends, martyrs to the darkness. And I know they left claw marks on life, but they just couldn’t hold on any longer, and that breaks my heart in ways I couldn't fathom when I was younger. Some nights I can’t sleep thinking about them; not that their gone, but just that life hurt them so much.
So what can I do? I guess I can hold on a little longer and a little tighter. And when I can’t hold on to something, I damn well better leave lines of blood from my weary and broken fingers. And I pray that I can hold closer and tighter to the ones I love, and cleave to the goodness in life and forsake the petty and banal and give the world everything that I have.
Perhaps it’s prudent to consider what in our lives should be let go of and what should be urgently grasped. Life really is about our grip on things. Alas, sometimes we think there is simply a shortage of beauty, a dearth of good arrangements left, and maybe just nothing worth seeking, nothing worth seeing or touching or being a part of. Maybe the wonder to it all has left. I have felt this too at times, but I know it’s a falsity, an ugly lie that makes us feel slightly better about giving up or simply not being strong for one day. William H. Gass said:
“Of course there is enough to stir our wonder anywhere; there’s enough to love, anywhere, if one is strong enough, if one is diligent enough, if one is perceptive, patient, kind enough—whatever it takes.”
About the Creator
Taylor Church
Omnivorous reader, author of two books, maniacal maker of lists and nuanced notebooks.
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