Prompt: "Now, after all you've been through, are you wiser, stronger, hardened, or just broken."
[This is a prompt from my cousin. When I finished it, I didn't want to post it on my Blog for all the world to see, so I figured I'd post it here, where only about two people will see it. Feel free to comment, I don't really care.]
Am I? I don’t know. I may be wiser, knowing what I know, a little smidgen of what they might have been through. But I don’t know it all. I don’t know what they truly went through, I don’t know if I’m right. How can I what I did, pretend to be in a situation I barely understand, possibly compare to the real thing? How can I possibly claim I’ve had anywhere near the experience the people who actually went through it?
It felt like it, but I can’t.
I doubt I’m stronger. You’re always supposed to be “stronger” after traumatic circumstances, like one terrible thing means you can outlive them all. It’s like the old expression “seen one movie, you’ve seen them all” but you haven’t. You can’t go see Alvin and the Chipmunks and then claim you’ve seen every movie in existence, that’s impossible. Things still scare you after you’ve been scared. A car crash will be equally as scary before or after you’ve seen a movie about car crashes, you won’t find it any easier dealing with the death of a loved one even if you’ve had others die before them. I don’t know if it’s possible to actually, truly ever be stronger from anything. I know I certainly don’t feel stronger, but then as we’ve already pointed out, I wasn’t actually there.
Hardened. I’m not that. I’m far too over-emotional to be hardened. If was hardened, I could read The Diary of Anne Frank all the way through.
Which leads to the final, and quite possibly most difficult part of the question. Am I broken? It’s the one I think I’ve been trying to avoid. Who wants to admit they’ve been broken? And by a play. A stupid, silly play you do all the time, where nothing is real and it’s all theatrics, how can that possibly make you broken? A person who actually went through this wouldn’t have the chance to be broken, they die. Does that sound cruel? It is. It really, really is. But what happens after…if you simulate the experience, but instead of everything ending, it all continues. Not the gas chamber, not the torture part, but just…normal life. How do you go on? Do you just pretend it didn’t happen? How can you? Should you? Would it be more disrespectful to forget or to remember, and do you really want to be respectful at all?
And then, as you’re contemplating all this, trying desperately to figure it all out, you suddenly remember that you shouldn’t be contemplating it anyway because it doesn’t mean anything. You weren’t really there. It may have felt like it at the time, but it wasn’t real. Nothing happened. You weren’t in a gas chamber, you weren’t being killed, you weren’t…alone. You weren’t. No matter how much you thought you were, you weren’t, and nothing can compare to the real thing, nothing. You may think you know, but you don’t, I don’t, no one does. No once can. And that’s the cruelty of it. No one will ever know, and those who think they do are wrong.
Or are they? You never really know. In theater you try to simulate real life. You try to take a moment in time and portray it as truthfully as possible. Is it possible for that to go too far? Or am I just really over thinking myself? Am I right or am I wrong? Should I or should I not? Is it possible to walk away unscarred from something like this? Or do you have to leave it broken?
And if you do leave broken, if you do, by some miracle find out that’s ok to feel the way you do…can you ever be fixed?
Apologies for being over-dramatic.
Am I? I don’t know. I may be wiser, knowing what I know, a little smidgen of what they might have been through. But I don’t know it all. I don’t know what they truly went through, I don’t know if I’m right. How can I what I did, pretend to be in a situation I barely understand, possibly compare to the real thing? How can I possibly claim I’ve had anywhere near the experience the people who actually went through it?
It felt like it, but I can’t.
I doubt I’m stronger. You’re always supposed to be “stronger” after traumatic circumstances, like one terrible thing means you can outlive them all. It’s like the old expression “seen one movie, you’ve seen them all” but you haven’t. You can’t go see Alvin and the Chipmunks and then claim you’ve seen every movie in existence, that’s impossible. Things still scare you after you’ve been scared. A car crash will be equally as scary before or after you’ve seen a movie about car crashes, you won’t find it any easier dealing with the death of a loved one even if you’ve had others die before them. I don’t know if it’s possible to actually, truly ever be stronger from anything. I know I certainly don’t feel stronger, but then as we’ve already pointed out, I wasn’t actually there.
Hardened. I’m not that. I’m far too over-emotional to be hardened. If was hardened, I could read The Diary of Anne Frank all the way through.
Which leads to the final, and quite possibly most difficult part of the question. Am I broken? It’s the one I think I’ve been trying to avoid. Who wants to admit they’ve been broken? And by a play. A stupid, silly play you do all the time, where nothing is real and it’s all theatrics, how can that possibly make you broken? A person who actually went through this wouldn’t have the chance to be broken, they die. Does that sound cruel? It is. It really, really is. But what happens after…if you simulate the experience, but instead of everything ending, it all continues. Not the gas chamber, not the torture part, but just…normal life. How do you go on? Do you just pretend it didn’t happen? How can you? Should you? Would it be more disrespectful to forget or to remember, and do you really want to be respectful at all?
And then, as you’re contemplating all this, trying desperately to figure it all out, you suddenly remember that you shouldn’t be contemplating it anyway because it doesn’t mean anything. You weren’t really there. It may have felt like it at the time, but it wasn’t real. Nothing happened. You weren’t in a gas chamber, you weren’t being killed, you weren’t…alone. You weren’t. No matter how much you thought you were, you weren’t, and nothing can compare to the real thing, nothing. You may think you know, but you don’t, I don’t, no one does. No once can. And that’s the cruelty of it. No one will ever know, and those who think they do are wrong.
Or are they? You never really know. In theater you try to simulate real life. You try to take a moment in time and portray it as truthfully as possible. Is it possible for that to go too far? Or am I just really over thinking myself? Am I right or am I wrong? Should I or should I not? Is it possible to walk away unscarred from something like this? Or do you have to leave it broken?
And if you do leave broken, if you do, by some miracle find out that’s ok to feel the way you do…can you ever be fixed?
Apologies for being over-dramatic.