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Eirinie wears the Muscle Tee and Standard Overall.
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So much of life is finding some degree of comfort with the unknown and the unknowable. Some people name this comfort (faith, hope, cynicism, community). Have you found a place of balance within the unknowable and, if so, how would you name it?
There are a lot of things about death that scares us, and I think the biggest is the unknown. What does it feel like, when will it come, what will come after, these are all things that haunt us. For me, these were questions that stuck with me as I grieved the death of my friend. There were also things unknown about her, even though I thought I knew her, even though we were soulmates. In coming to terms with her death I had to look at the hardest parts of who she was, I had to make peace with the fact that I would not know the answers to the burning questions I had for her. But I think with all of these secret things I was able to find a different place to love her and to live with her loss, a space between that became home. Maybe it would be called home?
You talk about wanting to make space for new ways of grief outside of societally accepted/well worn paths for grieving. If you could rewrite how we are taught to grieve or rewire us against feeling like we have to grieve "the right way", what would that look like? Is there an ideal way to mourn in community?
I think that grieving would feel a lot different if we as a community knew how to hold it together. We find it difficult to ask about a dead person, to watch someone cry or be angry, we don’t know how to do those things. I think that we could begin to make changes simply by asking, by listening. When someone tells me they have lost a loved one of my first questions is always, “what was their name?” It is so important to remember with others, to build a community where our dead are not merely relegated to cemeteries and ashes, but can live among us on the tongues of our friends and family.
Your writing about addiction (and the gentle-in-your-hands intersection with the way the world also cherrypicks its own narratives about Blackness, age, and class), becomes transcendent when talking about WHO and WHAT is worthy of our acceptance or concern, of our love, of our remembrance. We have all seen the included detail of Black bodies or addicted ones or poor ones or immigrant ones immediately tip the narrative scales towards "what-you-gonna-do", they got what they deserve. How do you (or we) weigh the scales back towards simple humanity being worthy enough of love, memory, or justice?
It is very very easy to see someone in the throes of substance use and immediately dismiss them, I do it even now, even after everything. It’s a kneejerk reaction, a “oh, gross” moment. In San Francisco I saw someone shoot up in broad daylight and I thought, that person did not choose to do that. They didn’t ever envision this moment for themselves. This is not what they wanted. Through that reframing I found a broader sense of who that person was and that seemed more important than what they were doing on Mission Street that day. I think most of life is the careful handling of dueling feelings- the pain of loss with the joy of remembrance, for example. We can hold both of those things together and therein is the humanity.
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Eirinie wears the Spring Pullover and Grace Slip Skirt.
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How do you want to feel in your clothes?
Sexy in an effortless way, comfortable but chic. I have moved away from fast fashion entirely in favor of a more sustainable wardrobe and the result has been more heirloom quality clothes, and a feeling of purpose to my outfits.
How does that inform your personal style?
I think I dress better now! Still rock n roll, still a little undone, but better.
Does such loss feel worth it to have loved so deeply?
I wonder if my love would have been able to reach such depths had Larissa not died. There was so much unsaid that I discovered after her death, and in that discovery my love for her matured. Having said that, I’d take a more shallow love if she could still be here, at the end of a phone waiting for me. I’d take this whole book back for an IRL Larissa.
What is left to say?
Tell the people you love that you love them. Tell them often, show them often. There will be a day where it is no longer possible, so do it now.
Follow Eirinie on IG here and purchase her book The Dead Are Gods here. Photos by Kirby Stenger.
Shop Eirinie's OZMA selects here.
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