Honorable Mention Goes To Jessica Jones. The Woman Of All Time - Tumblr Posts
the superhero's parallel to the hero's journey is one of an almost unbreakable curse: someone is harmed or killed while you are unable to stop it. you spend the next part of your life learning how to stop exactly that, promising yourself it won't happen again. you think to yourself, "if only I had been more prepared the first time, then I could have stopped it."
except defusing bombs isn't the issue. the person planting them is.
betrayal can't be anticipated: that's what makes it a betrayal.
and it's impossible to predict every single time someone will need life saving medical care.
still, you fantasize, "if I had the knowledge I have now, things would be different." and you save others from the same situation. time and time again. but still you ache. you didn't do it all those years ago. it haunts your every triumph.
it's not until you look in from the outside. the exact same thing happens to someone else this time, and you weren't able to stop it.
as you're beating yourself up for it and desperately trying to control the damage that's been done, you see someone sitting off to the side. they are alone and wrapped in a blanket. when you talk to them, you are shocked to hear that they blame themselves.
"What?!" you exclaim, "it wasn't your responsibility to stop this- you couldn't have known! it's on the shoulders of the perpetrators and people like me, who couldn't make it in time."
they are inconsolable. "from now on," they say, "I won't be so naive, and I will do everything I can to stop this from happening again."
you know when a battle is lost, so all you can do is nod and step away. back to your own business.
but it makes you terribly sad for someone to lose their innocence in such a way. to blame themselves for the consequences of someone else's evil. to never again see the world as a hopeful place: just a mosaic of fulfilled and missed opportunities.
and your story, the hero's story, will be tragic as long as you continue without looking inward.
it is only by considering your own beliefs that you are free of the vicious cycle:
sometimes, there is no happy ending, no clever way out. sometimes, awful things happen and there is nothing we can do about it. all we can do is pick ourselves off the ground, movement by excruciating movement, and hold our heads high. we continue. because it is worth it. not because you can "fix" things now. not because you will do things "right" this time. but because you deserve a good life. a life after the bad things. a joyful life.
this is when when you, the hero, finally realize that you're living a triumph. that even after something tragic happens, your life is not a tragedy.