Subpoint 2: Timshel

I don’t believe healing comes from isolated moments. I detest the romanticized portrayals of hollywood; the star crossed lovers reconciling in the rain, the heroes who stand triumphant over their slayed demons- they endings that feel fabricated, plasticated. I’ll admit, at one point they tugged at my heart strings with their powerful allure, but as I’ve grown to face reality I’ve seen the futility in hoping for snap-of-the-fingers change. Healing is a horribly long, drawn out process.


In bleak contrast to the abruptness of its start, my reconciliation with the events of my junior year lay on a slope of progress almost intangible. In literature, years of struggle can become condensed into hours of your own perception; it’s easy to gloss over time as an influence in the story- some writers choose to give it the back hand entirely- as you read. One’s own perception drives the feel of it; while the character may be supposed to be enduring months or years of hardship, it hardly feels as if it's any more than an hour or two of mild frustration. Reality, I learned, is much different:

Worn Out

I remember a time when I used to count the days.

The walls of my mind bled from the tally marks, looming as a constant reminder; that’s how long it’s been since things were ok. That’s how many days I’ve been lost in myself.

A month gone by; a sick anti-celebration held in my head. Cheers to being miserable right? Cheers to being broken. I’ll celebrate that- I suppose- and drink from my despair.

I understand that allure of intoxication now. It helps.

It makes the tally marks fuzzy and indiscernible, it makes each memory that they stand for weathered against the cold stone. It makes it so I don’t have to count those moments any longer, rather they become blended into one. One is a lot easier to understand than a thousand.

Much easier to have something else wipe the slate clean than try and forget it on my own.

I remember a time when I used to count the days; now I don’t know how to.









This poem is my own, coming from my ‘braided narrative’ project from AP Lang. Forgive the bleakness of it, but it reflects exactly how I felt at the time. Even a few- seemingly ‘short’- months into the year, I had already lost track of time, space, and the reality I used to live in. I started my days with a knot in my throat, and dragged through them swallowing and swallowing to try and force it down and away. It took a long time. My point here is that when it comes to healing and growing, there is no deadline. I once told myself, “I’ll give myself a week to go through each stage of grief, then I’ll be ok”, and had to bite my tongue eight months later. Healing is brutal in the patience and commitment it demands from you; and that is what leads me into my discussion of my second sub-point.

So far, I’ve discussed the characters who were knocked in the teeth or who had the floor ripped from beneath them. I referred to these events as “forced maturity”, the things that snap us out of our daze and into realization. Now I wish to discuss the aftermath of those events, and how we as vulnerable beings pick ourselves out from the dirt to stand again.

Choices embody everything. When you take someone's entire life and trice its outline with your finger tips, you can see the impact of every duality. Imagine the classic interpretation of time- specifically parallel universes, time travel, etc.- where every choice splits the universe into two; one where we make one choice, and the other where we don't. Like following the branches on a tree, depending on which direction you go at each junction you arrive at a much different place than you would otherwise. Take Werner, from All The Light We Cannot See. A small boy who one day chose to pick up the scraps of a broken radio and piece together its magic once more. Say Werner ignored the radio, and continued on his way that day, where would he have ended up? Certainly not in Saint-Malo, I don’t think; more likely, dead in the bowels of the coal mines that took his father. Of course, you can argue this “choice” is really a trifle, that its little more than random chance based on Werner’s whim at the moment. It is small, but still significant. Look forward though and you find more serious implications when Werner arrives in Saint-Malo; at this point, thoroughly grounded in the workings of the Nazi regime, he is faced with the choice of hunting down and executing Marie-Laure for running the radio in her uncles attic, or sparing her. Werner chooses to spare her, hiding her transmissions and her existence from the rest of her unit.

Why is this so huge? Werner’s arc up to this point intentionally threaded the line between moral upstanding and brainwashing. At Schulpforta, you couldn’t quite gage where his sympathies truly lay; with his Nazi teachers or his defiant friend Frederick. You’re heart clenches every time he utters Heil Hitler and remains motionless at the scenes of Fredericks betrayals. You’re all but convinced he’s lost to the Nazi cause, until Saint-Malo. This defining moment pulls Werner from the brink to rest soundly in the realm of heroism; betraying his country, murdering a German officer to protect a blind and cornered French girl working with the resistance. Werner made the choice, and by doing so reconciled with the poisoned nature of his past to redeem himself before his untimely death.

Dare to look into East of Eden and you will find Choice held in the holiest of regards. Every character (save Cathy, who in my opinion operates solely on primitive instinct) struggles through their lives. Adam and Charles brotherhood emulate the biblical implications of one of the most infamous choices ever made; Cain murdering Abel. While neither kill each other, Charles attempt on Adam creates a rift between them that arguably lasts through their lifetimes; their deepened contempt for each other creates a rift in their family- almost a curse- that plagues them through the generations Adams sons follow the same duality, especially Caleb who struggles deeply with his own fears of inheriting his mothers evil.

You may be wondering, how does one battle against such biblical struggles? Steinbeck offers the answer in Timshel: thou mayest. In its scriptural connotation, the word references Man’s struggle with overcoming sin. In some translations, the scripture reads “Thou Shalt”, implying men will surely triumph over sin, whereas others order the conquer; “but the Hebrew word timshel—'Thou mayest'—that gives a choice. For if 'Thou mayest'—it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.' That makes a man great and that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win"(Steinbeck). Through the resonance of Timshel, Adam can reconnect with his family and his sons; he can reconcile his bitter past with Cathy and die with resolution. Caleb can escape the grips of his mother and her tainted blood, and pursue the path of good over his instinctive inclination towards evil.

It’s a powerful message. One that sank deep into my core. Reading East of Eden brought my own struggles into a different light, one where I saw the many difficult choices I made and the lasting impacts they had on me. I would not be who I am today without them.

Most of the poems in my braided narrative were incredible visceral and dark; I intended them to be. They mirrored the blows life kept swinging at me and the uncertainty that swelled in my chest and constricted my breath. However, the writing process is nothing if not cathartic, and the project ends with a piece that takes a different shape:



Plant the Seed

I've seen a difference, she says

What? I ask, but can not say

The water, it doesn't fill you like it used to. It’s not as heavy. It’s not around as often lately.

You’re right, I admit
Only to myself.

You know, you’re doing all the things you need to be doing.

Am I?

Have they been helping you?

I’m still not over it

You haven’t been feeling better? You haven’t noticed a difference in yourself? (I have)

I’m still lonely, and angry and sick and tired deep down.
(But yes, maybe I feel better)

You know, everyone feels lonely at times. We all go through it. It’s ok for you to be frustrated, it’s ok for you to be upset with those around you.

It’s not ok that I’m forgotten

But are you?


It is every conversation I ever had- whether with my friends, my parents, my counselors, my mentors. It is every lingering doubt, every instinct to resist, every fight to remain trapped; but in the end, it is the quiet change of mind that pushed me out of the dark and back into the light.

Choices shape us. They are us. Quietly, they reach under our buried heads and lift them gently up out of the earth. From there, we can stand