history, huh?

I am so emotional about Shane trying to tell his mom that he really, really tried not to be gay, that he just couldn't help it. Shane who has all these complicated issues with being gay, because it's not something he can control, like he does with everything else related to his body. He can't fine tune this. He can't fix this with focus, exercise, or diet, like he can with all his other problems, because everything else about him is being a professional athlete. It wrecks him because it jeopardizes everything he's centered his life around, it's not just the money aspect of playing hockey, but that Shane lives and breathes and eats and sleeps hockey, if he lost it because he was found out, what would he even have left? That's Shane's journey, to realizing that, as much as he loves hockey, he will come to love Ilya more. But right now, he's so devastated because he can't stop this thing that he can't control, this thing that's a problem for everything else in his life, this thing that he fears will make his parents upset because it's going to derail his career, like they put all this effort and time into him, and he's going to mess it all up. And when Yuna apologizes with such heart, because she loves her kid so much, that she's so sorry that she made him think he couldn't tell her, and asks for her forgiveness--Shane doesn't say, "There's nothing to forgive." It's, "I forgive you." That healed something in me. Not because Yuna was anywhere near being a villain here, but because Shane's devastation deserved acknowledgement and validation. He deserved to be an injured party here. Yuna was completely human and never really did anything wrong (I WILL FIGHT THE INTERNET FOR HER, her son is a high profile athlete in a world that will notice he's Asian, she's locked the fuck in on what kind of game plan he needs to survive what the hockey world will throw at him), but Shane deserved to be the one giving out his forgiveness. It was him saying that of course he accepts that she loves him and this can be put behind them, but it's also a moment of Shane not having to downplay what he went through and how much hurt he was carrying around. That the lack of support in his life deserved to be acknowledged as having real weight.

Oh