vulcans, writing nonfiction, and grief

When I think of my father, I think of space (the final frontier).

I believe most of what I have written in the past two years circles back around to him in some way, like his death has some sort of gravitational pull. I feel, sometimes, that if I orbit it—if I devote myself to a centripetal path around the facts, the memories, and the myths I made of both—for long enough, then I’ll finally, finally figure it out.

That’s never the case, but I keep trying.

Today, Discretionary Love published an essay I’ve been sitting with for a while. It’s about a lot of things—my father, Star Trek, the autism diagnosis process, and grief. You can read it here.

Writing nonfiction is a navigation—you ground your work in the truth, but you retain your own perspective. My own memory, my interpretation, and my vantage point shaped every word of “Vulcan Father”. I don’t consider it dishonesty even though other family members may remember him differently or have entirely different stories—the work is true enough to my life.

There’s also privacy. Memory doesn’t belong only to the person doing the remembering, as we share the story of our lives with every other person who exists in it. I’m currently working on another nonfiction piece that alters specific, more important details to protect people who didn’t or can’t consent to being written about.

But, again, “Vulcan Father” is incredibly true to me.

There are things I know he’d actually say and there are things I wish I could hear him say about this piece. I tried to hold to the truth as it exists to me.

I don’t think he’d mind the spotlight, mostly because my intention was never to diagnose him or claim something definitive about something he was. Through writing about my dad, I want to trace our resemblance, to show there’s a piece of myself that still carries him even though he’s gone.

I keep circling back to the question of purpose. It feels like there’s a different answer every word, piece, or even day, and I have to constantly ask myself: who am I writing for? what is this work doing? what do I want it to do?

I think I can answer this question broadly—not specifically—with two facts: I draft for myself and I edit or publish for readers.

Yeah, every writer says they write for themselves, but it’s likely true for all of us. The mechanism of drafting is about creating meaning, a way of building internal maps for things that otherwise exist as bare shapes in our minds. It was how I got through a childhood with undiagnosed AuDHD, sitting in class and scribbling stories to myself, and it’s part of how I survived my dad’s death.

Editing and publishing are different entirely. At that point, I have to craft around what conversation I want to have with my reader.

That reader isn't hypothetical to me. She has a shape—curious, willing to sit with ambiguity, probably asking her own questions about the parts of her life that don't yet have language. I write toward her and I hope she’s reading

I believe there’s value in asking why we keep returning to certain subjects, what themes surface again and again without being consciously summoned, and what this says to our readers. Writing about my father keeps happening because something there is still unresolved—not in a way that needs fixing, but in a way that still has things to say.

I hope you enjoy “Vulcan Father”.

You can find me on my website or on my Instagram/Threads (at)prosperity.anguish.