I'm not sure to this day what she meant by that. Probably she was only repeating what I said to her daily as a sort of prophylactic wish. She began to pet my head like I did for her when she was sick. As she stroked my pee hair, she hummed a song, equal parts “Happy Birthday” and “Frère Jacques.” The dog padded downstairs and curled next to me.
The three of us stayed like that until I remembered how to move.
We'll be okay, Mommy.
# # #
I'd read twenty mysteries before I finally decided to write one. My belly was swollen. I could go an hour at a time without thinking of him. My brain and heart were starved. I lived at the end of a lonely country road that the plows visited last, and I saw how people were looking at me.
Pregnant. Husband killed himself. Out there alone with a three-year-old, forty miles from the nearest hospital.
People wanted to help. They worried about me. I still carry that with me, all their worry, all the pain they tried to haul for me so I wouldn't have to heft it alone. Not just my friends and family, but strangers reached out to hold me up, and they didn't stop even after the funeral. Grief is selfish, though, and so I could only watch and keep turning inward.
Writing a novel saved me.
# # #
Here's how May Day, the first mystery I wrote, begins:
I tried not to dwell on the fact that the only decent man in town had stood me up. Actually, he may have been the only literate, single man in a seventy-mile radius who was attracted to me and attractive. The warm buzz that was still between my legs tried to convince the dull murmur in my head that it was just a misunderstanding. To distract myself from thoughts of Jeff's laugh, mouth, and hands, I downed a couple aspirin for my potato chip hangover and began the one job I truly enjoyed at the library: putting away the books.
I glanced at the spines of the hardcovers in my hands and strolled over to the Pl-Sca aisle, thinking the only thing I really didn't like about the job was picking magazine inserts off the floor. Certainly the reader saw them fall, but without fail, gravity was too intense to allow retrieval except by a trained library staff member. I bet I found three a day. But as I teetered down the carpeted aisle in my flowered heels, I discovered a new thing not to like: there was a guy lying on the tight-weave Berber with his legs lockstep straight, his arms crossed over his chest, and a reference book opened on his face. He was wearing a familiar blue-checked shirt, and if he was who I thought he was, I knew him intimately. A sour citrus taste rose at the back of my throat. Alone, the library aisle wasn't strange; alone, the man wasn't strange. Together, they made my heart slam through my knees. I prodded his crossed legs with my foot and felt no warmth and no give.
My eyes scoured the library in a calm panic, and I was aware of my neck creaking on its hinges. I could smell only books and stillness, tinged with a faint coppery odor. Everything was in order except the dead man laid out neatly on the carpeting, wearing the same flannel I had seen him in two days earlier. I wondered chaotically if dead people could lie, if they still got to use verbs after they were gone, and if maybe this was the best excuse ever for missing a date. Then I had a full-body ice wash, five years all over again, a nightmare pinning me to my bed as I silently mouthed the word “mom.”
Had proximity to me killed him?
# # #
Six months after Jay's suicide, I called my mom and asked if she'd stay overnight at my house. She had driven the two hours one way to sleep over every Monday since his death, but this was a Thursday. My dad visited when I asked, was over regularly to repaint walls and fix leaks, but he preferred his own bed and had never slept in my house. He asked if he could come with mom that day, though. I said sure, I needed him to help carry some wood for the woodstove.
My water broke that night, with my parents sleeping upstairs in the spare bedroom and my daughter tucked safely in her room. I wasn't yet having contractions, but I rang the hospital to let them know that I'd be arriving soon. I'd called the hospital at least three times before to make advance arrangements for my daughter's birth and then my son's. Each time, different people, always female, answered the same impersonal way: “Douglas County Hospital, how may I direct your call?”
This time, the person on the other end of the line was a man. “This is Jay. How can I help you?”
Jay. My husband's name. I gripped the phone.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
“I'm having a baby.” It came out a whisper.
“Fantastic!” He sounded so excited that I surprised myself by smiling. “Has your water broken?”
“Just now.”
“First baby?”
“Second.”
“Why don't you come in now? We'll take care of you.”
My dad stayed with my daughter so she could sleep through the night. My mom drove me to Alexandria, steering her Ford Taurus between a moonscape of snowdrifts and the kind of cold that freezes the wet of your eyes. When we arrived, Jay took care of everything, just as he'd promised. My son, Xander, was born healthy and looking exactly like his dad. I had planned a big-sister party at the hospital, so Zoë arrived to balloons, presents, and cake, all for her. She surveyed the bounty and declared that having a little brother wasn't half bad.
# # #
I've never written about the facts of my husband's suicide before the words that you just read, but if you know my story, you can find it in every novel I write. My anxieties work themselves out in each book. I still hear his voice, I still fear the betrayal and loss that are around every corner, but I get to write the story, and at the end, the mystery is always solved. This is a slant way to deal with loss, but it's the only way I can do it. Only fiction offers me the truth.
What I have come to call “rewriting my life” didn't provide a clear, straight path from trauma to vibrant mental health and a two-book publishing contract. I was no pretty flower busting out of the crack in the pavement against all odds. The process was and continues to be a messy, three-steps-forward, two-and-a-half-steps-back kind of deal. But Jay's suicide put me at a crossroads where I could choose one of two life paths, drinking or writing, and I chose writing, thank god. Turns out rewriting your life works better than gin, which can only offer you empty calories and a holy calling to watch the entire season of Looking for Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska. (I researched it so you don't have to.) Crafting a novel, on the other hand, spins your pain, shame, and joy into gold, emotionally and literally.
I know you either are playing with the idea of writing a novel, or have already written one and want to take your fiction writing to the next level; otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this book. You're in good company. According to a study conducted by the Jenkins Group, 81 percent of Americans believe they have a book in them, and 27 percent of those want that book to be fiction. That's over seventy million people who want to write a great novel but aren't sure how. Rewrite Your Life walks you through the process of transforming what you know—your life experiences—into a powerful work of fiction, and subsequently transforming yourself.
I do have a request, though. As you read Rewrite Your Life, please don't equate the process of turning your life challenges into a novel with trying out for the Trauma Olympics. You don't win the gold the more pain you've experienced, though I think we all sometimes secretly believe that.
Pain is pain. Bad is bad; good is better.
Seriously, sometimes I'm sad or angry for no discernible reason. It counts.
If you still believe you need a pass to enter the writing club, I offer you this: transgenerational epigenetics strongly suggests that a sense of trauma can be passed down to you from your ancestors up to four generations back. That means if Great-Grandma Esther had a rough time of it, you can feel emotionally sapped even