Do you ever think about fictional characters and Feel so much about them that you get mad?
Like, I’m an adult person. With a job. And responsibilities. And stuff. And I’m sitting at work with my spreadsheets and webpages and to-do list and crap, and Spotify brings up “The Nights” by Avicii. And I start thinking about Bruce Wayne and his kids.
Our guy didn’t ask for these kids. He didn’t seek them out. He just didn’t say no when the opportunity to help them arose. He didn’t ask to be the entire Gosselin clan on his own. He didn’t ask to deal with PTSD and trauma and abandonment issues and puberty times six. He didn’t ask to become a walking meme. (“Sometimes a family is a rich orphan, his butler, and the entire cast of Annie, and I think that’s beautiful.”)
And our stupid, wonderful son is not known for his emotional communication skills, not matter what canon or fanon you ascribe to. But he’s so QUIET and STEADY and loves those kids SO FREAKING MUCH.
If Bruce Wayne took the Love Languages test, he would be off the freaking charts in Acts of Service and Quality Time. ♪ I’ll bleed and fight for you, I’ll make it right for you. ♪ He loves those kids more than anything else in this universe or any other, and he shows it every single day in what he does, in his presence, in his advice, in his dependability and steadfastness, even if the words rarely cross his lips.
But the song is about advice given from a father to a son, so then I started thinking about what it’s like for them once he’s gone. Because he was always there, so him being gone is like, like waking up one morning and the top two steps before your front door are gone. They keep falling and catching themselves, because what was supposed to be there no longer is, only it’s worse, because at least if it were at the front door, they could learn and adapt, but this feeling keeps happening over and over again and never in the same way twice.
And then can you imagine the emotions they all have regarding Bruce and who he really was to them? Regardless of the state of their relationships at any given moment, Bruce was their dad. Whether they claimed him at any given point, he claimed them, and he shifted and eased into the Dad-shaped niche in each of their lives.
So they knew he was their dad. But they didn’t really K N O W and internalize it, the same way you don’t sit around thinking about how reliable that front step is. And then he dies. And he can’t be their dad anymore.
Anyways, I almost cried at work today and got so mad about it that I think I scared my coworker.
