Nothing is black and white. Not even the things we judge to be the simplest such as a âare you a night owl or an early bird?â question. For every answer, for every action, behind it lies a very complex reason for why you picked a determined answer. In life, itâs the same. Things are multicolored, multifaceted and depending of a handful of factors combined that will impulse someone to take a certain action or opt for a certain answer. It really has put me into a lot of thinking when I found out the plot regarding Sen Ăal Kapımıâs season 2, and seeing so many people start to take sides of such complex and delicate situation made me wonder that maybe people were not seeing the full picture, maybe they were seeing a plain image instead of the 3D situation presented to them.
If you know the charactersâ story, you understand both Eda and Serkanâs actions are totally characteristic of them and correct in their own way. Iâll assume if youâre reading this you have knowledge of that, so I shall skip to the present situation and plot: Eda and Serkan broke up and stayed 5 years apart, but this turn in their love story has a bittersweet exception. Their child, Kiraz. Which Serkan does not know of.
Eda was asked to leave. After standing by his side through his cancer and thinking sheâd finally live the life she dreamed with the love of her life, he broke up with her. They fought a lot, he let it explicit heâd never have a family, he closed himself to the world, to Eda, he resetted back to the robot-mode workaholic burying himself in projects that he forgot life. The life he had with Eda. His behavior affected her as well, that closed off too, and although they were together, they kept distancing from each other every day a little more. Until they saw that there was no point in that relationship. Eda shows that after 5 years his words and cold behaviour towards her still hurts her deeply, even making the analogy that sheâs âjust a toyâ for him (ep 2 in the conversation scene with Burak). From her perspective, he decided to throw their years and relationship in the trash because he was the heartless insensitive man he was when they first met. Imagine you invest so much of yourself to someone just for this person to turn to you and tell you he doesnât want to hear from you, or have you near. Youâd be hurt. Especially after all youâve been put through to be by his side and live your love freely. It was beyond plausible for her to leave and not look back (okay, Aydan?) and whoever had close insight of their relationship and how it deteriorated would agree with that. Thereâs only so much a person can handle. It was time Eda put herself first, especially when she was carrying a baby that Serkan supposedly wouldnât want. She feared rejection, not just for her but for their baby, an innocent unborn child, a consequence of their love that was not the same anymore. He had said in her face that he didnât want children, so she acted out of protectiveness for herself and her child. She couldnât bare him rejecting the child. Maybe he would have changed his mind when she told him that she was pregnant, but she couldnât have known that. Serkan turned into someone that was unrecognizable, even for Eda. He wasnât just the cold workaholic weâve seen in the beginning of the dizi, he was a cold-traumatized workaholic. So she escorted herself out of that relationship and did not think twice to come back around and tell him about the pregnancy when she found out in Italy. It was basically the logic that if he didnât want her, why would he want her baby?
Serkan had to endure so much. After all the little things that consumed their relationship, after the plane crash, memory loss, he found out he had cancer. There is no way a person would stay the same after going through such awful disease. Serkanâs fear spoke louder than anything else, because heâs always been the kind of person to stay miserable and let her go so she doesnât deal with the burden of being with him. Serkanâs hypochondria spoke louder telling him he was cured but not safe from cancer, and he couldnât bare going through or putting Eda through that again. Even worse, leave her widowed. Probably the reason he kept postponing their wedding. During treatment he was still vulnerable, having Edaâs support all the way, trying to stay sane with all the mood changes and occasional insensitive behaviour towards her and everybody else. It cannot be put in words by a person that fortunately never had to go through or witness a person with cancer, but all of his âinconsistencyâ is more than justified. He never did it on purpose, it was the collateral effects of his disease, psychologically and physically speaking. After beating cancer, things seemed to have a bright future until it hadnât. Serkanâs self sabotage knocked him down again, making him reset back to his old ways, except this time he had much more baggage and traumas than before. He shut everybody out, even the only person that he let in, and drowned in work, obsessed with âbecoming immortalâ through his projects. He forgot life, he forgot the love of his life. Not because he wanted to, but because his unconscious wanted to protect himself, and her. What if cancer came back? He knew very much of diseases as a person so worried about his health, he knew there were chances that it would come back. Heâs gone through it once and barely survived, heâs seen the state heâs put him and Edaâs relationship through, he felt like a burden more than ever before. He didnât want to hold her back, he didnât want to have her stuck with him, taking care of his ill self that wasnât even sure would make through the cancer treatment. He always felt unworthy of her, imagine now. He didnât want children, because he feared theyâd become fatherless. He didnât want to set a wedding date, because he feared heâd leave his wife a widow. Or not make her happy. And he knew they werenât happy. Because once he digged back down on his workaholic hole, he didnât come back up again. It was stronger than him, he kept pushing her away and burying himself deeper. And she closed off just like him, so they both closed off in their own lonely cocoon and started to slowly become strangers again. Until one day he asked her to leave, and she didnât see a reason to stay.
He told her to leave, he told her to stay far away from him because he wanted to protect her, and most selfishly, himself from more potential pain, suffering and heartbreak. He thought itâd be the less hurtful way (just like the plot of the secret about Edaâs parents accident), except he just made it worse for her. It doesnât mean heâs a monster, a heartless human or an ungrateful bastard as many people are portraying him to be. It makes him human, it makes him a human with fears and insecurities, too aware of his own mortality and how it would affect the people that were dearest to him. Because when youâre sick, not only you go through stuff, the people around you, the people that loves and cares for you also goes through it all with you, to the point it can affect them personally too. He never came around and explained his reasons, because when he closed off his feelings were shut off. He bottled it all up and never said a thing, leaving Eda thinking the absolute worst of him and that still reflects in her hesitance about him 5 years later with an apparent normal Serkan back in her life. Serkan, now fully recovered and back to being himself, finds Eda again and everything heâs been trying to keep hidden, all the suppressed feelings and unfinished business heâs had with her, came back banging. He canât let her go, he said it himself at that night talk. He canât because he still needs to say a lot to her, to apologize to her even though it was NOT his fault. NEVER his fault. Nor hers, for leaving.
Serkan beat cancer years ago, but he never went looking for her. Weâve seen enough of their story and Serkanâs fears to know that heâs always felt that he wasnât enough for her and that heâs brought to her life only pain, so itâs totally understandable why he never reached to her when he was sane again. He wanted her to be happy and free and she would only be able to do that if she was far away from him. And of course, Eda being hurt wouldnât want to come back, wouldnât want to keep in touch with him, so she cut ties entirely. She was on her right to not come to him when she found out about the pregnancy, because she knew he still wasnât him. He was barely fighting for himself, living for himself, caring for himself, how would he do that for a child? But then he comes back⊠now what? Eda wants to run away from him, afraid heâd hurt her the way he did before. But heâs not that post-cancer Serkan, he still has the scars and the trauma but you can clearly see that heâs back to being the old Robot Bolat. Heâs still closed off, but the initial scare and fear of abandonment disappeared with the passing years of him being healthy again. He sees Eda and he wants to be around her again, because he never truly wanted to part ways with her. Eda hides a secret, a secret sheâs not right nor wrong to hide, she just figured it was best. And even in the first moments of him being around, itâs understandable that she wanted to hide the fact she has a child to him, as it may be a huge shock and turn of events. She doesnât trust him, more precisely his reaction, and sheâs unsure of what to expect. She needs him to give her a proof that heâs not the same unstable Serkan she witnessed before she left. She needs him to open up, he needs to open up to her. That is just it, the reason none of them could ever move forward, apart of their ever growing and intense love for each other. They still have a lot that was not talked, that was not finished, they didnât solve their issues, therefore they didnât heal.
Tell me how can you blame a mother for choosing her child over any possible heartbreak? How can you blame a woman for walking away after being so emotionally drained and not being able to put up with an exhausting relationship for BOTH of them? How can you blame her for not wanting to live that life with him when he wasnât putting any effort on their relationship or on his fiancĂ©e? How could she guess what he was feeling, what he wanted to say, what were the reasons for his behavior if he closed off and never spoke a word?
Tell me how can you blame a traumatized man with so many complexities for closing off and pushing everybody away in order to not hurt them? How can you blame an hypochondriac man for wanting his beloved to be free from any strings attached to him and his disease because he canât bare the fact he could possibly die and leave her suffering? How can you blame a human being that has gone through such a traumatic disease and invasive treatment as cancer that affects the whole being, physically and mentally, and transforms them into someone vulnerable and afraid? How can you blame this man for acting the way he did when heâs only done that because of all the fears heâs been accumulating since his childhood, his psychological traumas. How can it be his fault?
Serkan would die for Eda if it didnât mean she would suffer for his loss.
Eda would be unhappy for eternity if it meant she could stay by Serkanâs side.
They would do anything for each other, and at one way or another, they did. Until their relationship deteriorated and they couldnât keep going on, because they were losing themselves in an endless looping of traumas and pain. They were together but together they couldnât do the healing, they were so exhausted they couldnât heal each other nor themselves, it became unhealthy for them. But beware, it WAS NOT any of themâs fault, it qas just how they were living their lives. Their post-traumatic lives.
Sometimes thereâs no right or wrong, there are just different point of views of a certain situation thatâs so hard to grasp and so difficult to understand unless youâre personally living it. But trying to put yourself in their shoes also would do.
So please, yeter with the Eda AND SERKAN slander. Both were in their own right.
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