Trauma, Disability and Happy Endings

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This past summer, I had one of those days as a disabled person.  You know the type.  A phone call with an official person meant to last "just five minutes" lasted an hour.

Toward the end, she went over some questions to get more thorough answers, and this happened:

Her: Oh, this is a fun one! So, have fun with it, okay?

Me: Um...I don't do well with fun ones.

Her: Well, you dodged it very neatly last time, but just try to think if you have anything to add. When you hear the words hopes...dreams...and aspirations...what comes to mind?

Me: I'm sorry. I'm not going to be able to answer this in the way you want. Because my dream is this. My dream is living here, and having freedom to go everywhere I need to without breaking myself in half. This is the dream because growing up? I could not imagine it. I could not imagine moving beyond the situation I was trapped in. I had to save myself. This doesn't mean that I don't have things I love doing. Things I enjoy. But I cant answer this question like a nondisabled person.

***

Jordan Fisher has said: "Not every story necessarily has a happy ending and nobody lives happily ever after all the time."

Needless to say, I relate.  Hard.

As a trauma-survivor, it's difficult for me to wrap my brain around happy endings.  I struggle to write them.  I struggle to get satisfaction out of them...because all I think when I read them is, "That's not realistic."

What I mean, of course, is "That's not realistic for me."

Let me be clear about what I am not saying:

- I am not saying that trauma-survivors can't have happy endings, or shouldn't want them.  

- I'm not saying that disabled people are incapable of finding happiness or happy endings.

We can.  And if we want to, we should.

I guess, what I'm saying is happy endings look very different for me than for the average, non-traumatized person.

This means that my writing isn't for everyone.  (It was once memorably called: "overly dramatic for no apparent reason.")  Which, yes, I suppose if you don't come from trauma (or a lifetime of trauma, as it were) reading about something serious or dramatic on every single page can seem unnecessary.

Other people's happy endings may look like: People meet and get along and love each other and just enjoy life together with the occasional bump in the road.

[Image: Pages from a fantasy book]

My version of a happy ending looks very much like an unhappy ending, to most: because hard things still happen.  My characters struggle.  They deal with unimaginable things.  Losses and pain and pasts full of any manner of difficulty.  What makes my ending happy, is often, the very validation that life is tough.

Not only that, but I often add one key element that was often missing for me in various situations: support.  Seeing this support through a trying time feels so validating for me as a trauma-survivor, because for me?  Having that support through a given situation would have been the best case scenario.

I say that not to be depressing, but simply honest.

As a trauma-survivor, I'm not averse to happiness.  I promise, I'm not.  It just kind of scares me.  Because my norm growing up (and for most of my life) was the complete opposite.  So, that, in many ways feels normal.  Because even if it's terrifying, it's at least familiar.

I often don't know what to do with traditional happy, or happy endings.

I've discovered I can write them, if I need to.  (But based on stories that already exist.)  It's interesting as a writing exercise.  As a personal challenge.  Sometimes, it feels better, but often times, it feels like I'm erasing important aspects of a character's life - even, in certain cases, erasing disability - in the interest of giving out feel-good moments.

Because my idea of a happy ending isn't having everything in my life be perfect, it's having people by my side, regardless.

***

When I first started working on this post (about a year ago) I had not yet read Amanda Leduc's Disfigured.  If you follow the link, you can read my thoughts on her book.  But my mind was blown at this excerpt in particular - which perfectly describes why I dislike the notion of 'happy endings' in a much more concise way than I have been able to describe myself:

"In her short story 'A Conversation with My Father,' Grace Paley has this to say about the way our lives move through the world: '[Plot is] the absolute line between two points which I've always despised.  Not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away.  Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.'  Society has treated the disability narrative as this 'absolute line' for centuries - a very specific journey to an unhappy ending.  Disability as the antithesis of able-bodiedness; disability as something less and other.  Disability, seen with this lens, obliterates the status quo of the able body and demolishes the happiness that society has traditionally associated with health and wellness.  Disability, in this sense, becomes the very thing that takes hope away.

"But the truth is that disabled life and the disability narrative can be - and indeed are - filled with hope.  Disabled people live lives filled with pain and joy and struggle as much as anyone else.  To view literature through the 'open destiny of life' is to understand that the end of a story is not so much an ending as it is a departure - the point at which the audience stops traveling alongside the protagonist and allows them to continue their way through the world.  In much the same way, we need to understand that the 'ending' of the disability narrative need not come with either a restoration of able-bodiedness or a descent into despair at the removal of able-bodied life.  Instead disability narratives and disabled lives deserve to continue as they are, moving forward equally into the realms of joy, frustration, sorrow, anger and all the other elements that make up the complex reality of living.  We deserve the 'open destiny of life' as much as anyone else, and the stories we tell about disability deserve exactly the same."

- Disfigured by Amanda Leduc; pg 231-232

***

The above excerpt explains so very well why I don't do well with traditional happy endings, and why so many of my stories center around character interaction and disabled people just living day to day, moment to moment.  I go into writing with a big idea or two, and then, generally, I let the characters tell me their story.

I love the idea that I don't know what's coming next for my characters.

I love when a story 'writes itself.'

The 'open destiny of life' is so beyond important to disabled life.

***

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