Write Something Honest

The Whale, a film by Darren Aronofsky starring Brendan Fraser, provoked me to write something honest. Something I’ve been too afraid to tell. Something I’ve hidden from myself and others.

I took a pen, and 20 minutes later there it was, a blank page. Staring at me like a stray puppy on a side of a village road, begging for crumbs.

I know how soul-crashing it can be, to betray myself. We all said things we had later regretted. We did something stupid, and had found ourselves playing it over and over in our heads weeks later. But perhaps there’s something we can’t erase from our memories even after years have passed. These memories haunt us in the night, in our dreams. They find us in the moments of our weaknesses, and they crush us with the heaviness of its weight.

I’ve lived through things I wish no longer to remember. But I do. I remember looking at my dad with my eyes wet and my whole body shaking, terrified of the only person I trusted the most. I remember seeing his blurry red face, mad at me for things I can’t recall I did. Things that don’t matter anymore. Little scars we leave on each other’s souls for something so minor on a scale of the universe, and yet so large on a scale of our own lives that they could tear us apart.

Remembering such things is betrayal. It’s a crime we commit to ourselves, and so dishonesty makes it appearance. But the solution is not in forgetting these things. It is in deciding to let them go for how insignificant they are, for they were part of our past, and that they don’t define our present, nor our future.

Be honest with yourself, and you’ll see the world for what it is and its people for who they are. Be able to love the mistakes you’ve made, as they are only that, mistakes.