When Elliott Smith killed himself, it seemed to confirm my worst fears: that one might spend a fair amount of time slaying one’s internal dragons using the purifying force of art, and yet still, years later, be overtaken by said dragons and, literally, slide a knife into their heart.
For years, I have ruminated on this. When Jenn killed herself in her mid-twenties, I was bereft and still carry a twinge of survivor’s guilt about losing touch with her and not being accessible/aware/available when she may have needed me most, but that is just a bit of a saviour-cum-centering lens that creeps up on me when I least expect it — in the shower, driving on 75, sipping a shot of mezcal in the sun.
What could have been? With Jenn, it was about so much lost potential and joy and wonder, about how it’s so difficult for many of us to make it out of our twenties undamaged and alive, about all those whispering banshees of self-doubt huddling on the sidelines, siren songs convincing us that we are either egotistically mad if we believe in ourselves or broken if we don’t, ymmv.
But with Elliott, a passing acquaintance, someone I spent a fleeting amount of time with laughing and drinking and dreaming, splayed out on the floor of the Crocodile listening to him strum sadly and confess all of his fears. With him, there was a loss of hope in the fortitude that might come with surviving all the bad shit. Because in him, there was an element of transmogrification: I am not alone in my desperate feelings of self-loathing and inability to love myself or feel love from others — we’re all on the same fucking ship, sinking and playing whatever instruments we can get our hands on in order to stave off the sheer horror of impending death. And it’s not that death itself is so terrifying on its own — it’s the looming specter of death laced with all of our unrealized dreams and hopes and could-have-beens. It’s oblivion.
My mother outlaw called me this week, crying on the phone; she had just learned that a dear friend had taken his own life, and his sister told her that he obviously was going to hell. “I know we have different ways of seeing god, Kat, but where do you think he’ll go? What will happen to him?” The first thing I could think of is — what do you think will happen to you after you die? Because that’s where he’ll be.
Where will you be now that he is gone, though? What of him will you carry with you?
The past decade has been such a peculiar chapter in my life, punctuated by external global forces that everyone is experiencing, yet built upon a foundation of deep confusion. The twenty-something who had hoped so deeply that by the time she was in her thirties, she would be solid and stable and feel loved and finally be “happy,” who then morphed into a somewhat drearymanic chick in her forties, grasping at any possible straw that gave a hint that it might provide comfort, has presently developed into a fifty-year-old wannabe bogwitch on the edge of a tender, fragile, gossamer peace.
That peace is not without its unruliness, though, and it’s largely framed by the goofballs and hormones I’m taking just to keep my biochemistry from taking over and disabling any possibility for self-care and love. But it is a pit stop on this journey, and the bevy of mechanics spilling out from the sidelines to swap out my tires and top off my engine oil are the people who I have chosen throughout to love, and from whom I can finally feel love.
While I have bittersweet memories of spending time with Elliott, I think the more powerful and intoxicating nostalgia I connect with him is rooted in a series of solitary experiences: swinging in the hammock in the inky jungle night, the waves crashing in the dark and gently vibrating the ground beneath me, a single slice of honeyed light spilling from the one bare bulb in the middle of the cabin. 1997, 21 years old, Puerto Viejo, everything lay before me. And Elliot’s strums wove in between the jungle cacophony and ocean waves, connecting me to a promise of myself, of creative wonder, of what this life might bring me.
It is a gift to hold those moments in my heart; to play a song and be immediately transported to a previous version of myself. Lest I try to smooth out all the edges of my internal turmoil and recast the past as a halcyon dream filled with only joy and grandeur and promise and hope, I can connect with that time and remember that all the beauty and curiosity and wonder were all the more intoxicating because of the deep pain and sadness and anxiety that I felt. The duality of hope and fear constantly flipped the coin of my heart, leading me into a series of questionable choices and activities. That I made it through relatively unscathed and still holding onto the faded swatches of memorable moments — both positive and negative — is also a gift.
On this sultry, soon-to-be-summer morning, posting up just outside of Detroit, I can’t help but feel grateful for all of the moments that have brought me to 8:42 a.m. June 4th, 2026. And that I’m still here, that I can continue to connect to and hold space for those I have treasured who could not make it this far on their own journey.
And that I can carry them with me, into a future they could not imagine for themselves.
