[511] Open Heart, Open Mind v2
Hey there, hope you can comment about the short story below which will be turned into a "School of Life" type animation. Btw, the title will be changed, but as of now, it will be the same.
What I am looking for would be:
- Overall Comments (Any comments are welcomed) & grammar edits
- How did it make you feel/Did it make you feel anything?
- Which part could be fixed? And if possible, how to fix it?
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His eyes sparked with a raging fire as his roar strangled the life from my body.
I wanted to fight back. Or at least I thought I wanted to. But at that moment, my muscles turned stiff, my heart raced and my mind simply went blank.
As the stranger in front of me crushed me with the weight of his words, all I could do was crumple into the depths of my mind.
Behind the bars of my mind, I heard a voice saying "there's nothing to be afraid of."
"The berating of the stranger was merely vibration of the air. At most, his words were tickling your ears."
With this realization, I armed myself, ready to fight back. But as soon as I escaped the confines of my mind, I was yanked back into the abyss.
It was then that I realized - Just as I was free from the shackles of my mind, I was still anchored by the fear in my heart.
As I searched for the burden weighing me down, I realized there was a place in my heart where no light has ever touched.
There, I found it. A trauma, a tightly woven knot of fear that had rooted itself deep in my heart.
Soon, my urge to find the truth turned into a blazing sword fresh from the forge. I was ready to cut through my trauma to get rid of the burden in my heart.
However, with each swing I took, my trauma only seemed to root itself deeper into my heart. As I attempted to slice through it again, and again, I was confronted by images of my past.
The time when I got scolded for going home with bad grades.
The time when I was chastised for constantly asking 'Why'.
The time when I was chided for crying over my lost toy.
These memories were frozen at the back of my mind, but I ignored them because they did not matter to me. They still don't matter to me, but I came to realize that I wasn’t the only one living in my body.
After years of dismissing and ignoring my trauma, I finally approached it with kindness. The same kindness good parents would provide to comfort a child crying in the dark.
Finally, all the moments that were previously frozen in time began to move forward. The roots deep within my heart began to retract.
As I begin to awaken my mind, open my heart, and unravel my trauma, I begin to see that hurt people, hurt people.
The shouting of the stranger had a pain behind it. His anger was nothing but a shield for his pain, his shouting, desperate attempts to fight for his life.
I realized that all of us are desperately fighting our own invisible battles, just hoping to survive. This includes me as well as the stranger.
As my internal monologue comes to an end, all I wanted to do then, was to reach into his heart, face his trauma, and just say "Hey, it's okay."
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Previous Critique: [700] Synopsis for "Replaneted", a science fiction romance
Posted Nov 3, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC