One of my favorite shows ended this past spring. I’m always so nervous when shows end, because I’m worried it won’t be done well and ruin a good thing (Lost, anyone?), but I don’t think the writers of Bones could have done a better job. (Minor spoilers ahead, guys, but nothing too serious and it’s been like six months. You’ve had time.)
So in the final episode, the lab is blown up. The whole thing, with everyone in it. No one dies, but Bones ends up with a head injury that in some science-y way removes her ability to, well, be Bones. She says to her teammates (I’m paraphrasing), “I know that I’m supposed to know the words you’re saying, but I have no idea what they mean.” In one split second, one event, she lost her entire self. She was alive, but her identity, the very essence of what made her HER, was gone.
The episode, and the series, ends with a conversation between Bones and Booth (her husband, for non-watchers), after she’s gone to salvage what she could from her office. He’s going through her box, and says, “What’s with the broken clock?”
She replies, “That stopped when the bombs went off. When the lab reopens I’m going to hang it in my new office to remind me. Always.”
“4:47. Why would you want to be reminded of the moment everything almost ended, Bones?”
And she says,
“Because it didn’t.”
Because it didn’t. This statement stuck with me. It felt so profound and resonated so strongly, but I couldn’t figure out why. I stewed and processed and let it just bounce around in my head for months, really. I knew it was going to be a topic of a blog, but a lot of times I think “Oh, I’ll write a blog about that”, but don’t actually know where I’m going to land with it. It’s just part of my process. I’ll write either in a draft or in my head, and just ramble until all of a sudden I realize, THERE IT IS. That’s the point that all these words were leading to. So here it is — what finally hit me.
At this point, Bones’s brain had healed and she was her brilliant self again, but there was a significant chunk of time in which she had to determine that everything wasn’t over even if she couldn’t be Bones anymore. Even if all the years of work, the schooling, the papers, the hours upon hours in a lab were all for something she could no longer physically do; even if the single quality by which she defined herself was taken from her. Even if everything seemed to be for nothing… and it could have been the end. Everything almost ended. But it didn’t.
Maybe you’ve been here. You’ve sat in the rubble and stared at your broken clock. You’ve spent days and long, long nights trying to figure out why it seems like everything, all your best efforts, have ended up being for nothing at all and you’re not only back where you started, you’re worse. Maybe you don’t recognize yourself when you look in the mirror. You know you should know those words, you should know that face and what’s behind those eyes, but you just don’t. Maybe something has brought you to this place, but I’m here to tell you that it isn’t over.
Being pregnant sent me into a spiral. It took a long time for me to even realize it, and once I did it was so bad I was worse than a mess. I was full on, lab-leveling-explosion level disaster. I lost myself, and everything could have ended. But it didn’t. I’m still here. I’m not who I was, maybe by a long shot, but that’s ok. Some days are better than others. Some days I’m upside down and backwards, and thankfully those are fewer and further between. But I’m going to hang on to that clock. I don’t want to forget these days, as horrible as they have been. Because I don’t ever want to forget what I’ve had to learn to get through them. I’ve had to be braver than I knew I could be. I’ve had to dig for scraps of faith, doing anything just to hold on. We’re still barely holding on. But we will rebuild, I will rebuild, and I will remember. I will remind myself, and I will remind you. Remember that moment, that season when everything seemed like it was ending.
Because it didn’t.
Best thing you’ve ever written- best message I’ve received in the past few months. Seriously. Thank you for sharing.