Episode 72 - Effect Part 2

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Welcome back to the podcast, to a story. A different sort of story. Not one of a long forgotten show, not the story of an episode pieced together by my shoddy memory and shaky hands. But of an episode that could have been. Or an entirely other show that might have been made in a different timeline in which different choices been made and Wyatt had been given a chance to have his own story as opposed to being a blip in someone else’s: a blip centered around a dark moment with a dreary sort of ending. 

That’s hard to imagine because it seems as if he was led down that road by his love for his brother. And that sort of thing can make a dark twist and turn seem inevitable. Wyatt loved his brother, that love shaped his soul, and that love set him on a course that led to the end of his life. It’s all linked together so tightly that hindsight’s only contribution could be to stitch those pieces together even more. It’s hard to look beyond what did unfold, what was presented to you, in order to see all the branches outward, the paths that could have been but did not come to pass. 

Or so I think. Granted, that those alternative realities live exclusively in our fantasies. That’s the most these alternative versions of people will ever get. And these things don’t really have a bearing on the rest of the world. But they could have been. They could have come to pass. And so, well, they work for comparison purposes. Which are the only purposes that I can bring myself to care about.

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On that note, what would have happened if I had never started this podcast? Some hours of the day might have been saved, but really, podcasts are prime for multi-tasking. Meaning that those hours were likely accounted for in other ways. But clearing up the space in your listening queue makes room for other shows with more coherent stories and more deserving showrunners.

That sounds self-deprecating, right? But in context, it isn’t. You just don’t know the full scope of the problem yet. I haven’t had a chance to show it to you, which admittedly is part of the problem.

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Wyatt was a dejected child, cast out by his biological father and the man’s true wife because if you asked her, there wasn’t much else you could do with your husband’s bastard child that he himself cared nothing about. To give her that small ounce of credit, Wyatt’s stepmother looked towards her husband for some sort of guidance on what to do and found only the same coldness and disregard that he had for his mistress, the mother. She echoed his approach.

Wyatt’s brother was different, though. His brother’s heart knew only love. His eyes could only see reasons to give out care in every soul he met. No matter how small someone was, no matter how lowly, how cast aside, or how dejected. Or even how unloved by others, others the boy was supposed to look to as role models. He had been told thing about Wyatt, that much can’t be denied, but the young brother simply did not heed the many things he was told.  Love was the truth that withstood all of the storms, all of the reasons to doubt, to change, to worsen, to be corrupted, to rot. And it was love as an icon, as a near deity that Wyatt’s brother served, which–in turn–pulled Wyatt into the cause as well. But he didn’t have the time to fully put his heart into it, to fully commit to his brother’s cause, He was getting there, though. He just needed more time.

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It’s almost fanciful when I put it that way. The story takes on this watercolor type texture, or this sort of detached from reality fancifulness. It no longer seems real. But that’s the point. It’s not fully real. And maybe it never could have been. No matter the circumstances. But it could have been more real than it is now. It could have been more of something than what we eventually had. It could have materialized, been real enough, and had some real effect on the world. It could have been, but as it stands–as a series of actions Wyatt could not control played out around him–it is no more.

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But what is a story? It has to tell us something. What was or what will be or what could have been or could be. Regardless of the specifics, it is a portrayal, a revelation that is sometimes more veiled than not. It is something to challenge, something to interrogate. It is an invitation to ask questions, though they may not always be properly answered.

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The first act of love is the one that has the most lasting effect on us. That is the one that we cannot ignore. We will think we are ignoring it because we know no other. We will not think we are devoted to it because we know no other way of being that does not involve that devotion. That is our normal. That is the air we breathe. The water a fish swims in. That becomes a central part of their cosmos, and so its effects can never be fully escaped. 

As for Wyatt, he had a mother, sure. She probably loved him, and as important as that is, it was more of a prerequisite to the care his brother would show him later. Wyatt’s mother delivered him into the world, presented the facts of his birth honestly–a testimony that brought nothing but complications–before she was forced to retreat. She died is what I mean. 

So I grant you that she never did stop loving him. Death presented its own complications. Grief is not the opposite of love, so much as it is its shadow. It is a marker of the love that was there. It can point back to the whole, the thing that is actually dancing in the light that cannot help but cast that shadow. The tie is unbreakable. 

But at the same time, it is not the sort of love Wyatt remembers or can remember. The image is too complicated–the give and take too hard to dissect and distinguish–for it to be the sort of thing a child can understand. It is a reality that made so much possible, but it is not a lesson that can be carried forward. 

For that, Wyatt needed his brother. For that, Wyatt had his brother. Until he didn’t. 

But suppose he did. Suppose he never lived solely in the loss of love, found himself drowning yet again in that shadow and instead had the light. 

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To me, that story is remarkably simple. The young boy Wyatt grew up with, his brother, was one who had come to him in his darkest moments. There were many of them considering Wyatt spent his entire childhood cast out by a father and step mother who did not want him to exist, never mind exist in their presence. And in the darkness of distant sheds and cold cellars, it was their son who reached out to his brother. It was the smallest hand that cut through the dark to reach out for another who was lost, who needed the touch of kindness that only the purest soul could offer. 

Granted, it couldn’t really fix anything. Wyatt’s exclusion was law for far too long. But his brother was a lifeline. His hand was comfort. It was so many things. Like inspiration one could say. 

Wyatt would have said if he had been given the chance. But that didn’t happen.

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Stories can influence us just like we influence them. Just like we are influenced by each other. The touches of the world brush against the skin and then seep in deep enough to haunt us or stay with us in some other way. To keep us going perhaps. Anything is possible, even if I don’t have a great frame of reference for most of the good things.

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Her name was Grace, which was a stunning irony considering she never knew it in her short life. She was young and vulnerable. Much like Wyatt she was not loved by those charged with caring for her. In fact, she was hardly noticed. They didn’t even have the presence of mind to cast her out. Instead, Grace was left in the dark, sitting in a seat that Wyatt wouldn’t have found unfamiliar. She was left there, waiting and hoping for something better, but it likely was not going to come. Her parents had no other children. Or–at least–not one who would have been brave enough to reach out to her. She didn’t have a brother like Wyatt did. She didn’t have another child to show her the bravery that Wyatt once witnessed, and so, he would have to be the one to reach out in the dark. He would have to be the one to get her. 

And he would have been willing. In this story that will never got to be told, he would have been a teacher. It was a career option he was floating around in his head, an option he had been unsure of taking, but it was still there. It was considered. It was a possibility. It could have happened. It could have been. 

And had it been, Grace would have seen adulthood. That is how the story could have gone if circumstances had been different. And Jade a little braver. 

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Even now, I can’t do the story justice. I had meant to. That had been the whole purpose of this episode, but the vision is blurry and my resolve weak. I cannot chase this fantasy, afraid of where it will lead.

So once again, I failed. It doesn’t surprise me, really. 

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or post about it on some mysterious online forum. You do you.