There Is No WHY! Get Over It!

Please stop asking: "What happened?"

Hang on to your hats, readers, 'cause I'm all fired up. Here we go.

Some Background on My Writing

Besides writing this weekly Substack to all you lovely readers, I'm also currently working on a big, ole messy memoir about grief, and I write flash prose. The flash pieces are mini-narratives, usually under 1,000 words, that I submit to literary magazines in the hopes of getting published. I can't post these flash stories here because if I did, the lit mags would consider them previously published and reject them. And I want to get published in lit mags because it gives my writer bio a little more cachet. I don't need any more reasons for the literary magazines to reject me, as they already reject me fairly consistently!

This is all background information so you understand that the reason I got fired up was due to feedback I received on my flash pieces from literary magazine editors on two separate occasions.

The Feedback That Set Me Off

The first feedback I received was on a flash memoir essay about what it was like for me after my sister Julia attempted suicide and failed. It was called “Purgatory,” and it was about me being in limbo for the eight months between Julia’s intentional overdose and her death. My piece was rejected, and the editor’s feedback was: "... there is no mention of what your sister's life had been like prior to the overdose. Can further insight be provided ..."

I was upset by that question, because

1) Julia died from mental illness. There is nothing in particular that led to that.

2) The piece wasn’t about Julia but me!

I explored my feelings about the editor’s feedback in another narrative, which I attached to the first, creating a new flash essay retitled “Purgatory in Two Parts.” That got published, and you can read it here.

THEN, last week, I submitted a flash piece about a fictional young woman named Emma who enters an AA room. I paid $30 for feedback, and here's what I got: "... I don't know enough about Emma, her challenges before coming here, and her previous failed attempts at getting help."

BTW, I never mentioned anything about previous failed attempts. That is something the editor assumed because why would anyone go to AA who hasn't had a previously failed attempt?

He also asked, "How did she come here?"

Missing the Point Entirely

I get that for a narrative story, there needs to be a character arc, but I felt the editor missed the point because it wasn't about WHY she arrived there. It was about what got her to stay in the room. The piece wasn't even about Emma, but about the grumpy old men in the corner!

But even if it was about this fictional Emma going to AA, I wouldn't write about what led her into that AA room, because ...

THERE IS NO WHY!!!

The Myth of the Inciting Incident

We all want there to be a why. It's the "inciting incident" in any memoir or novel that moves the character towards change.

But here's the thing with mental illness and addiction/alcoholism: There is often no reason why a person has become addicted. Just like there's no simple "what happened" regarding my sister's suicide. Mental illness happened. So when you ask "what happened" that brought someone into a room of AA, well ... alcoholism happened.

What You Actually Hear in the Rooms

In AA, you do hear horrific stories. People driving drunk, crashing their cars, maybe hurting someone. Parents abandoning their children. Children stealing from their parents. Awful things that make you gasp. Then, the speaker says, "But that didn't get me to stop." In about 70% of the stories, you hear: “The day I quit drinking was not my worst day. Nothing big happened that day. It was just a day I was tired of being sick and tired."

In

Laura McKowen

recent post in her Substack "Love Story," she talks about a conversation about sobriety with a masseuse who asked, "'So, why did you stop?'" Laura responded, "Because I was going to die," which I think is an awesome answer and one I might borrow if people ask me that question.

But that wasn't enough for the masseuse, who pressed further: "Can I ask, though, did something happen?"

Everyone Wants to Find the Line

Everyone assumes you got sober because something happened. Everyone wants to know what that something is. In my opinion, it’s because they are calculating in their brains whether or not they’ve crossed that line.

As I mentioned earlier, people often cross that line several times, and that's not what prompts them to stop.

I have what's known as a "high bottom," which means I didn't get a DUI, I didn't have child services take away my kids, I didn't lose my job. But yet I knew I was an alcoholic even without any of those things happening to me. I mean, I didn’t need a car crash to tell me I was drinking too much. I was the one buying the vodka!

It Wasn't Trauma (Spoiler Alert)

Once a relative said to me, "But you drank so much because of the tragedies your family endured, because of your siblings' deaths."

NO! NO! NO!

I drank alcoholically as a teenager before my brother died.

So if it wasn't my siblings’ deaths that "turned me" into an alcoholic, then what was it? [shrug] Personally, I believe there is a genetic component. You often hear people say in the rooms, "If you shake my family tree, bottles drop out." But you also hear plenty of people say, "I've never seen my parents drunk. I'm the only alcoholic in the family." So who knows?

The Uncomfortable Truth

More often than not, there is no dramatic story to tell. There is no clear "what happened." Sometimes people get tired of being sick and tired. Sometimes the disease just is.

And that's a harder story to tell because it doesn't fit our narrative expectations. But it's just as valid, just as real, and just as worthy of being told without explanation or justification.

So lit mag editors, what say you? Will I have to tell you why my fictional drunk Emma walked into her first AA meeting in order for you to publish my essay? She walked into that AA room that day because she was an alcoholic. Isn’t that enough? Sheesh.

Disclaimer: To err is human. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. I use Grammarly, but mistakes still occur. In this world of AI, they're my way of keeping things delightfully human.