How I'm Doing

Or what I wish I could say when everyone asks.

Imagine if we led with our traumas as our biography descriptors. Instead of: Jess Rinker, author, adjunct, mother, and wife, I could be Jess Rinker, sexual abuse witness, natural disaster and fire survivor, and most recently, caregiver to my soul mate during stage four cancer.

Talk about heavy introductions. And those are just the big achievements. I twice had to save a beloved dog from frozen pond. Lost another beloved dog to a broken spine when he fell in some sort of freak way in the woods. Had a very sick child who was often hospitalized when he was young. Have a very allergic child who remains so. Went through foreclosure, divorce in both childhood and adulthood, floods, emergency surgeries, a tornado, and multiple hurricanes. I mean…is anyone still reading this? I’m exhausted typing it out. Besides, I know I’m not the only one with a list like this. I know some with far more bullet points.

But thinking about how trauma and loss affects our lives has also really made me think about resilience, and specifically how people handle trauma differently. How it makes some of us more adaptable, and some not so much. My father likes to lead a lot of conversations with how often he moved as a child and how poor he was growing up. He’s been informing me of these details since I was a child, and I have tried to assure him as an adult I now understand how those experiences have informed his life. If I didn’t understand this, there’s a very good chance we’d have little of a relationship because of the traumas he, in turn, inflicted on me. But I also try to push him to stop focusing on it so much that it becomes an excuse, and that’s where I lose him. In his mind it seems to be the end-all determining factor of why he does what he does. End of story. As much as I can tell, he understands the connection, but that’s where he leaves it.

In the story I tell myself, all experience is a jumping off place for growth and to do things in new and better ways. To step out of my comfort zone. To not let cyclical trauma continue to be carried down, when I’m aware of it. Obviously, I’m not always aware of it and it takes a lot of time to get to this place even when I am. And I can’t always stop it, but I can frame it in better ways than simply as reasons (excuses) to my current behavior. I don’t know about others, but I cannot settle for excuses in my life.

Although it’s far more exhausting, I do believe (I need to believe) if we can take trauma as a learning experience to be a become better human than we’re moving in the right direction. Yes, I have been a victim. Yes, I have suffered and cried and raged and struggled with depression my whole life because of it. I’ve gotten really pissed off at people, made mistakes, said hurtful words I wish I could take back. But I also have better learned how to let go of what is not important, and when to hold on to something wonderful. How to be in the present rather than completely stuck in my past experiences. How to love deeper. How to express myself better. How to live in a way that makes me fulfilled, even if I’m broke. How to be an authentic person, even if it’s not returned. And none of these are mastered, they will continue on to wax and wane. I don’t really know anything. But I never stop trying.

My traumas make me, but I don’t let them take me down. There have been times where that has simply meant I succeeded in getting out of bed. And there are times, like now, where I feel led to commune with others about this idea. Maybe that’s simply a product of age, to be willing to sit with people and write and talk and settle in with our trauma, grief, and loss. I find solace in others who have not only been through shit, but are willing to talk about that shit in ways of growth versus personal defeat or excuses in the way my father talks. I’m not saying we should be all sunny about the awful, sad events in our lives, but we can find a certain kind of comfort in knowing awful things happen to everyone. And especially after we see certain patterns wreaking havoc in our lives, it’s time turn them around and use them for good. I truly believe that we can.

When my husband was diagnosed, I went through all stages of grief immediately. My early sporadic journaling shows how my thoughts and emotions bounced all over the damn place. I had no idea how to handle any of it. I still don’t. The fog has just lifted enough that I’m able to even recognize how a diagnosis can be a trauma—for both of us. I hate it, with every healthy cell in my body. I hate that his body and brilliant mind has to go through this and that I have to witness it all. I hate that I will be left behind. But I cannot change any of it, so instead of fighting the journey, as I wanted to in the beginning, I so desperately want to do the rest of it right, or at least as well as we can. Some days this diagnosis makes me want to run away so I don’t have to deal with it at all. Get a visa, hop on a plane and hide out in Italy. Or at least pull away emotionally out of preparation because I know the end game. Who wants to be part of a slow, painful goodbye? Hardly anyone. That’s why so many people simply send prayers. Because you have to make the choice to go through it, and I’m telling you, it’s not an easy choice.

Even as I write that sentence I think, that Italy idea ain’t all that bad…

But I have experienced both choosing to leave and choosing to stay. So, I say with full confidence the love is real and good, and I choose to stay.

When I was working on my MFA, we were taught a concept that writing is like walking through the woods with a flashlight. Sometimes you can only see what’s in the beam of light at your feet, and you must write your way through the woods with only what’s illuminated. These days I realize sometimes the batteries run out and you have to keep walking in the dark. But you keep walking. You keep writing. That is the path and the only way through.

Now there is new trauma in my path. This time I see it coming, I cannot stop it, I cannot fully prepare for it. I will have to endure it in one way or another—alongside my love, no matter how enticing Italy looks. Will I use this experience as an excuse for the rest of my life or will I embrace it, feel it, mourn in it, and let it grow me? And how do people do that, anyway? There can’t be one single way, but a multitude of methods, tricks, conversations, and rituals I hope to keep learning from those who are willing to share their experiences. I don’t want any one instance to define me, unless it’s an ultimate definition of tenderness and connection. If trauma is my bio, let it show people that I lived my life well, not despite or even in spite of it. That I lived well with it. I don’t want to be the seventy-five-year-old man still lamenting his childhood as though it’s something he can still change. It’s not. But it is something he could stop reciting like the alphabet and instead rearrange into poetry.

I won’t be the one to convince him of that, I can only use the words for myself.