I trained everyone to believe I was fine

About this video:

I’ve spent most of my life answering one question the same way: “How are you?” “I’m fine.” My family, employees, and friends have heard it so often that I sometimes wonder whether I’ve taught them not to ask anything more.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between resilience and strength. Resilience means getting through something. Strength, at least the way I’m beginning to see it, is something you keep building. Living with two cancers has made that distinction more important to me. There are scans, phone calls, and updates that can leave my whole body bracing before I even know what’s happening.

I also wonder whether always saying “I’m fine” is independence, basic courtesy, or a way of keeping people at a distance. I don’t have a definite answer. And I don’t think everyone experiences the word resilience in the same way.

This isn’t a lesson about how to be strong. It’s me trying to understand what strength really means—and whether the habits I’ve relied on for years are still serving me.

Transcript:

I trained everyone to believe I’m fine, and now nobody asks for a long time. I call that independence. Lately, I’m not so sure. Here’s the thing, my family, my employees, my friends, I train them all the same way. Someone would ask how I was doing. I’d say, “I’m fine.” That was the whole method. No lecture, no boundary speech, just two words over and over until nobody expected anything else.

Except I’m not sure trained is even the right word. Maybe people just don’t want the whole list when they ask how you are. Maybe I didn’t build a cage. Maybe I just noticed a door everyone already wanted closed. I genuinely don’t know. I’ve been sitting with that question for weeks, and I still don’t have an answer.

You know, I’ve been struggling with the word resilience, and I think I finally know why. Resilience just means you got through something. Strength means you built a muscle. I like strength better because a muscle is something you keep building. Getting through something just means it’s over. You know, internal strength is mine.

Nobody can hand it to me, and nobody can take it away. External resilience is what other people assign you from the outside, and the label sticks whether or not it fits I have two cancers right now. The phone rings or the portal updates, and there’s a half second before I know anything at all, or my whole body’s bracing.

Internal strength doesn’t stop that half second. It means I don’t panic before there’s a reason to. Even when there is one, panic still isn’t the move. You know, almost twenty years ago, my first diagnosis was a single hard hit, a date I could point to. What I face now doesn’t have a date. It’s a scan every few months, a number that moves a little.

That takes a different kind of strength than surviving one blow. I can’t remember the last time someone asked how I really am. The agenda asks, a doctor’s intake form asks. Outside of that, I don’t know what people mean by the question anymore. Maybe I trained it out of my life. One, I’m fine at a time, or maybe it was never really there to begin with.

I went looking for other people wrestling with this word, and I didn’t expect what I found. In one caregiver community, someone wrote that she felt lonely, forgotten, and lost, and in the same breath, called herself the definition of resilience. Nobody in the reply saw a contradiction. For her, being called resilient wasn’t a cage.

It might have been the only medal on offer for work nobody else could see. I can’t dismiss that. I don’t think I’m right, and she’s wrong. I think we’re just standing in different rooms, looking at the same word from opposite windows. When I first wrote about my cancer, I used CaringBridge, and most of us stayed close to reporting: scans, numbers, next steps.

Near the end, the writing started drifting towards feelings instead of facts. Once I noticed that, I moved somewhere else. Looking back, I wonder if that was one more version of the same training. Keep the feelings contained, even in the one place built to hold them. I don’t have a clean ending for this, and I’m not going to force one.

I don’t know if I’m fine is self-abandonment, basic courtesy, or a door I’m holding open for somebody else’s turn. I don’t know if strength is the right word either, or just a new name for the same old habit. Whether nobody asks because I trained them or because that’s just what people are, I hon-honestly can’t say yet.

Hey, this is Josh. You’re at The Long-String Trip. I’m glad you’re here, and I hope to see you next week.