From Katherine D. Morgan
As I write this, I'm in the midst of an ongoing bout of depression. I don't know how bad it's going to get just yet. Usually, I find myself riding the wave, bobbing through moments of sadness intermixed with glimpses of joy. I am both glad that I still exist and exhausted by the act of said existence.
You may be wondering "What does Katherine's mental health have to do with this series?" Well, a lot, actually.
When I was assigned this project, I wasn't depressed. Or maybe I was. Even when I'm not actively depressed, I'm bracing for the next wave. After surviving the past two years in a pandemic that will most likely never end, I needed to read about something other than getting by. I wanted to read about those moments—big or small—that make us proud to be alive. I still smile when I receive a handwritten note in the mail among the stack of bills. It always pleases me to witness two bus drivers going opposite directions on the same route wave to each other. I love it when my boyfriend brings me flowers simply because he knows that I’ll like them. I love witnessing joy and I love being a part of it. But I still don't know how to write about it.
A few months ago, before the depression ramped up again, I attempted to write a joyful essay about the moment that I knew that I loved my boyfriend. It wasn't an earth shattering moment: I was boarding a plane to visit my best friend in Missouri. But I didn't say it. While my plane was experiencing turbulence, my greatest fear wasn’t dying, but dying without telling him that I was in love with him. When he picked me up at the Portland airport a few days later, I looked at him and said those three little words. He said them back, we kissed, and we have been saying it ever since. I thought that would make a perfect story about joy, so I sat down to write, only nothing happened. The moment was joyful, but it wasn't reading that way. I realized I had never written about joy before, and I had the joyless fear that maybe I couldn’t.
I heard the same thing from fellow writers, including a few of the ones whose works you are about to read in this series. While a handful of these talented writers—Jun, Alice, Jennifer, and Alexa—are coworkers, I am grateful to call all of the writers in this series, including Bruce, friends.
Each of these authors have written about what joy means to them. A few of them asked if they could make the essays a bit sad, and that made sense to me, because after joy comes sorrow. Or after sorrow comes joy. Either way, sometimes sorrow is to be expected. This is what I’ve learned about writing about joy: not every moment is filled with sunshine, not every moment needs to be.
Ghost Pansy by Bruce Owens Grimm
Joy as Protection by Alice Harding
Who I Am by Jun Ogata