Post-ep for "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole." We learned quite a bit about Brennan in some respects, and in others it was nothing we didn't know already. Either way, I think if Brennan were to keep a journal, perhaps one of her next entries might look like this.
Many thanks to Mindy for her help!
(I HOPE This turns into a 2-parter. We'll see!)
Years ago, I thought that my life's goal was to sort out facts, statistics, and answers. I was supposed to be the voice of those without voices; tell their story.
And somewhere in that mission, I forgot to live. I forgot to write my own story.
It wasn't until that first case that I was reminded of how to feel. I was reminded, in rebuilding the story of someone else's life, of how to be a participant in my own.
My friendship with Angela began to truly blossom after that first case. Working with her vibrant and outgoing personality on a daily basis opened my mind to different perspectives and lifestyles. While we certainly didn't "hang out like girlfriends" – though she did try to initiate such activities – the very close friendship we developed over the next twelve months was invaluable to me.
Because in that twelve months of spending time with Angela at the Jeffersonian, I was learning to force myself to be able to tolerate Booth in my life again. It was a year where I was forced to acknowledge the dreary existence that I had – void of any true emotion.
He made me cry.
For the first time in years, someone made me cry. I had stormed out of that police station like a spoiled toddler, having been given a taste of icecream only to have it taken away.
Because, for the first time since I was an adolescent, I had been give a taste of fun, vibrancy, humor, and affection. Someone had spent time with me; someone who was more than a skeleton on the metal table in bone storage.
Certainly, he had sought me out for my intellectual assistance; I had skills and knowledge that he didn't have. And it was those traits that caused him to seek out my professional services.
But it was the almost-immediate bond we formed that caused him to have to become inebriated before he was able to fire me.
These interpersonal relationships, these bonds, cannot be told by bones. These are the stories that skeletons cannot relay.
The information bones gives us is dates, times, facts. I can learn where someone lived, what their diet consisted of, what type of sports or activities in which they participated. I can testify in front of a judge to someone's ethnicity, gender, or nationality.
Skeletons cannot tell the stories of lost loves, of tears shed, or of proverbial heartbreak. They cannot tell me how educated someone was, or what their IQ was. Bones cannot tell me if someone was 'the brain' or 'the heart' of a team. Bones do not tell me if someone devoted their life to causing crimes or solving them. I cannot learn kind-hearted versus cold-hearted, generous versus stingy.
Bones do not tell me what makes a person.
Perhaps there is more to be learned about what makes a person than just what the bones tell us.
Perhaps, after all these years of listening to bones, learning about facts, perhaps it is time that I start experimenting with the heart.
Perhaps I can learn to live. To write my own story.
A story that hopefully someone else will be able to uncover and retell and learn from.