hi you guys.
i'd like to appologise in advance for any bad spelling or grammar mistakes or if this thing just plain sucks. i'm not quite myself today.
there's a whole story behind this one, so sit back, relax and enjoy it.
a few years ago my best friend's family, who i've known sense i was six, wanted to get another dog. my aunt is a labrador breeder, and she had a litter of puppies. i put them in touch with my aunt, and then i fought like hell, because there was only one puppy left that hadn't been sold. eventually they got the puppy and named her Jasmine.
yesterday, the phone company was doing something with the wires in everyone's back yard. i don't know what, something about the internet. when they were messing around in my friend's backyard, they left the gate open and Jasmine and her other dog, Casey got out. later that night they found Jasmine on the side of a busy road. she'd been hit by a car. Jasmine is dead.
when i found out, my reaction was similar to Katara's in the story. i hate stories that say stuff like, "and the tears clung to her eyelashes studding her eyes with a thousand diamonds, blah blah blah..." no. no, grief is not like that. grief is messy.
and that's what i was trying to get across here.
Grief is messy.
In the fire nation, messy things were never tolerated for any length of time.
Every thing in the fire nation was always graceful and dainty and clean.
To be other wise was a sign of deplorable dishonor.
Therefore…
You did not grieve.
When Zuko's grandfather died and his mother vanished in the same night, he did not grieve. He knew that if he did he would be labeled as weak.
So he bottled it all up and stored it on some dusty shelf in the back of his mind.
Hoping he would never really have to deal with it.
He had never known anyone to openly grieve. Until the day a saber-toothed moose lion killed Katara's pet kola-sheep.
He had seen people cry before, but always it was delicate, pretty, and quickly stifled.
He was totally unprepared for Katara's howling sobs and swollen blood-shot eyes.
He was astounded by the way she collapsed wailing incoherently as her entire face seemed to puff up.
As he looked at the girl whom grief had transformed from a strong, beautiful bender into a sobbing puffy wreck, Zuko suffered an epiphany.
Grief is good.
Yes it is messy and painful and unpleasant and heart wrenching to watch as well as experience and no one can really do it gracefully,
But it is natural and healthy and normal and right.
It is the right thing to do when someone or something close to you dies; hell, when anyone dies is ok to grieve. Grief is not weakness. Grief is strength.
Now, I say that Zuko suffered this epiphany because at the moment this realization struck him he suddenly re-discovered that dusty bottle of pent up feelings that he had been keeping inside him for more than four years now.
And as he noticed it, for perhaps the first time, it shattered.
Years later, looking back on all of it he had to admit that it was fairly amusing… but when he was flat on his face screaming with tears pouring out of his good eye and beating the ground with his fists, he did not think that it was very funny.
No matter what Toph said to the contrary.