Those That Break The Chain

Mark pushed Billy and made him fall onto the soft and sticky mud. The unfairness of it all imploded in his mind, fuelling a fiery rage inside his heart. 

“You must be tough to survive in this world,” said Mark, spitting on him as his friends all around him laughed. 

Billy wanted to recover from the ground and strangle him. If he could burn all the bullies in the world he would. So he imagined the scenario in his head.

Billy gets up and strangles Mark. Mark’s friends all come to his aid and gang up on Billy. He gets in serious trouble in the office after they tell the teacher. The principal calls his parents and his parents are very disappointed in him. When he tries to explain himself, they ignore him. “There is no excuse for what you did,” they tell him admittedly. This changes his outlook on life forever, and he grows up bitter and resentful. When he reaches thirty years old, he marries his longtime girlfriend and they have a son, Nick, and in three more years they have a daughter, Mary. Billy raises them his way. He punishes them hard and gives them no love. Every time, he tells them, “You must be tough to survive in this world.” Their childhood tears over the years could fill a lake to the brim. Pain and misery is all they remember.

When Nick drinks his first bottle of alcohol, he realizes it is able to take away all the pain that he still has from his father. He drinks more and more until he can’t contain himself. He spends all the money he has for one more bottle. This addiction causes him to be estranged from his sister. Mary, who has always relied on her older brother for support in dire times, now has no one to turn to. She used to always be able to talk to him, and they had gone through life as a duo until this point. Now, when she goes to him, he tells her, “You can’t depend on me. You must be tough to survive in this world.” It devastates her. With no close friends due to the fear of trusting people she gained from her father in her childhood, and now no brother, she runs away from home. She is never seen again.

When Nick is older, he has two children. His eldest is a son named George, who becomes as broken as he is. Nick teaches him the same philosophy he was taught all his life, from his father: “You must be tough to survive in this world.” George is raised with this mentality. He becomes egotistical and insecure, always trying to prove his tenacity to all the people around him to please his father and himself. He comes off as rude and abusive to everyone else. His behaviour ends up causing great pain for his girlfriend, Olivia.

Olivia is manipulated and heart-wrenched by George’s actions. She tries to speak up about it to him, but every time, he tells her, “You must be tough to survive in this world.” At first, she fell in love with him because on the outside he looked brave and capable, but now she learns that it’s all a facade to hide his inside insecurity. She feels trapped and feels like she can’t get help from anyone else, or else she would disappoint George. And the few times she tries, no one is helpful. After years of George’s physical and emotional abuse, she spirals into a deep melancholy and decides her only way out of it is to commit suicide. Before she does it, she whispers to herself that she must be tough.

Nick’s other child, his daughter Emma, grows up soft, compliant, and malleable because of him. A father who is always enraged and bitter can create such a child, who had no formal and crucial wisdom from a parent. This causes her to have a passive and naive outlook in life, and it gets so bad that one day, when she is a teenager at a party, she grows very close to a suspicious group of men, ending up learning to trust them and think of them as friends. Then, one night at another party, the men take advantage of her and rape her. They laugh at her screams, teasing her. “You must be tough to survive in this world,” they tell her. When Nick learns of what happened to his daughter, he becomes so sad and furious he goes on a drinking spree that eventually kills him.

When Emma grows up and gets married on her own, she does not have a father to walk her down the aisle. It reminds her of the past, and she still feels broken. Her brokenness stays with her all her life, and she ends up thinking it’s impossible to make it leave. It causes her to not give much love to her son Ben, a bright young child that is playful and happy. Over the years of his childhood, his joyful personality is taken away from him as he grows up with a mother who is always sad and exhausted. When he asks why, she remembers her father’s words, as well as the experience that changed her life for the worse forever, and she tells him to listen to her closely. “You must be tough to survive in this world,” she tells him. She tells him to never forget those words, to remember those words for the rest of his life.

Ben’s father is a good but busy man who never has time for his son. Along with the fact that he grew up without the love of a mother, this causes Ben to be angry all the time, even at other people. Without a caring force in his life, he begins to blame other people for his insecurities and his lack of empathy. All the while, he sees no problem with it, despite others telling him to get help, because his mother told him to be tough and he is following her advice. At school, he is mean every day to another kid named Elijah. With his friends, Ben bullies him, telling him, “You must be tough to survive in this world.” Elijah lives his life in fear and despair every time it’s time for him to go to school.

One day, while Ben is pushing him around in front of the other kids again, Elijah breaks. A huge school scandal occurs. Ben and Elijah fight, knocking each other to the ground and taking turns mauling faces, grabbing throats, and ripping clothes. Some kids cheer, bringing out their phones to record. Some kids tell everyone not to egg them on. Some get the teachers. The fight is vicious and long, and when it ends, the authorities are called. Elijah gets in serious trouble for initiating the fight. But others tell him he did great for standing up for himself, and they tell him, if the world is against you, no one else but you can do something about it. So they tell him being tough was the right decision.

Elijah had been a good boy all his life. He did good in school, had a passion for soccer, and was all-around a nice kid. To hear about the fight scandal ruined his father, Beckett. Ben came out of the fight seriously injured from Elijah. For Beckett, the psychological impact of his son doing something so terrible to another kid, as well as doing so much damage to the reputation of himself, his school, and his family, causes him to spiral into deep financial problems. Legal problems, lawyers, and an unfocused attention on his work throws him and Elijah into a hard situation for the rest of his son’s childhood.

When Elijah reaches adulthood, he practically comes out of poverty. Even working the best he can, he does not have enough money to give a good life for his only child and daughter, River. “You must be tough to survive in this world,” he tells her. He explains that they are poor and the only way to fix it was to fix it themselves. River takes this to heart and grows up with a fierce determination to get them out of poverty. She is forced into a very motivated drive, one that makes her work extremely hard all her life. She studies in college, gets loans and debts, works multiple jobs, all that she can do to help her and her father. We are broken because of past familial trauma, she thinks. But I can fix this by being tough. She eventually becomes moderately successful, but it comes at a price. Years and years of stress causes her to mostly ignore her signs of a heart attack. Others warned her to go see a doctor when the early signs showed, but she only thanked them and ignored the advice. Who would help them now if she was to be incapacitated? Even for at least a few days would she be behind in her education, and the two of them behind in their bills, and she could not take that. So she felt she had no choice. Before she could celebrate her achievements, the overwork exhausts her and she finally gets a heart attack. As she dies, she believes she is a failure, that she wasn’t tough enough. Guilt overwhelms her that she let her father down. She dies at work, without her father at her side.

All of it, somehow, like a vision, Billy could see.

He is still on the ground. In the previous moment, his heart was set on revenge. But something changed. Mark and his buddies stood above him. They were still laughing at him on the ground. But now, blinking as if he had woken from a dream, Billy comes to a calm and wise realization. I can stop it, he thinks. I can stop all of it from happening. If I can refuse to act on a temporary rage, I can save everyone from the future permanent pain. If I can refuse to act on revenge and show my enemy some love, I can decrease the amount of hate in the world. Even if it might seem like an insignificance now, it will be a lot in the long run with our descendants. Mark must have had some life experiences that caused him to turn out this way. But it doesn’t have to continue, I can end it here. We have to be tough to survive in this world because we made it that way. But if everyone helped each other, we don’t have to be. Even if the moment now looks like the smallest decision, it has the potential to be the biggest turning point. It doesn’t have to go down the path I saw. I can be one of those that break the chain. 

Billy rises from the ground and dusts his pants. 

“What are you going to do now, huh?” says Mark. 

Billy only shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. “Would it not be so much better if instead of fighting, we helped each other? I don’t need to be tough against you if you are my friend.”

“What?”

Then, he sees it. His son and daughter grow up as happy children, after he teaches him that phrase. The philosophy gets passed along. Nick becomes a good father. He never gets alcohol poisoning. Mary becomes strong and independent with the support of her brother. She never runs away. George takes after his father, and him and Olivia have a loving relationship that leads to a marriage. Olivia never takes her life. Emma grows up secure and smart and is taught well by her parents to never let her guard down. She never gets raped. Ben grows up with the love of an amazing mother and is nice to everyone he knows. His best friend is Elijah. They walk home every day from school together and talk about soccer practice and upcoming games. Elijah remains a good boy all his life. He helps his father with his work and chores around the house, and the two never fall into poverty. River remains determined to do good in school. But she is never pressured enough to get a heart attack. If things get too hard, her father has her back. She feels safe and loved. She survives. Because so, she has children, and the chain continues.

Tears are gone. People are alive. The evil trauma of generation after generation is erased, defeated by the light of Billy’s good. He understands now, too, that because of his actions, if he befriends Mark, he can break his bully’s chain, too. The revelation brings him a joy he’s never felt. 

When he walks home from school that day, after an awkward but deescalated aftermath with Mark, who decided not to hurt him further, he sees a yellow butterfly near some bushes, flying around sporadically. When it gets close to him, he gives it his finger and it lands on it. He chuckles. It was tickling his finger, moving around with its legs. “Look at you, little fella,” says Billy. “You’re so tiny, you can’t do a thing to the world, can you?” It responds by staring straight back at him with its black, soulless, half-sphered eyes. When Billy decides to move on, he lets it go, looking straight ahead. He never saw a flap of its wings. Not even once.

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