Work Text:
My name is John Watson and this is the story about my life as part of the life of Sherlock Holmes
MY PRIVATE NOTES
January 6, 2017
London, 9:15 PM
Sometimes I hear people say that they are happy.
I say nothing, but like with everything else, they all lie. People go through things in life, some more than others, and whatever they might say we never forget the pain we have felt. We never do. Deep down, it will always be there. Every heartbreak, from the first time you got dumped by your middle school sweetheart to the moment you throw a flower onto the coffin that belongs to your mother.
It doesn't end there. There are also the things you have done, the guilt and pain over the people you have hurt and betrayed during your lifetime. It never goes away. Trust me, it never does and it keeps tearing you apart. How can anyone ever say that they are happy when they have all those things left in their minds? At least I'm being honest. I can never be happy.
I have thought many times about how great it would feel to just forget. To forget everything. I would quite gladly have had a needle put into my arm with some of that TD 12. "Bliss" he called it, Smith. Bliss. Bliss of being able to forget the pain of what the people I love and have loved have done to me and what I have done to them in return. So much pain. And anger. And loss. And remorse. And grief. Yes, what if we could just make it all go away? Erase everything. No memories. Nothing. Bliss is ignorance and ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance. Nothing. No memories.
But is it really bliss to be able to forget? If ignorance is bliss, ignorance always comes with a price. And the more I think about it, bliss isn't ignorance, to have no memories at all. No, whatever I might say, even how painful my life has been, I know that I do know what bliss really is. Bliss was the feeling of excitement when my new flat mate asked if I wanted to "see some more" and I ran after him over the rooftops of London, the adrenaline pumping furiously in my veins. Bliss was the absurdity of sitting with him on a couch, as he was dressed only in his bed sheet at Buckingham Palace, while we laughed at his brother. Bliss was the first time I kissed the woman who became my wife. Bliss was when my best man played our wedding waltz on his violin as we danced to it. Bliss was when I held my daughter for the first time.
And I think it is some kind of bliss that I feel when we eat birthday cake at a bakery in central London this afternoon. When I watch my old landlady, who has become something of a mother to us all, laughing and turning to the pathologist at St Bart’s, who became my friend and a family member and has always helped us, as she handles my baby daughter to the maniac who is my former flatmate, my very best friend, the best man I will ever know, who never hesitated to go through his own personal hell to save me from my own, and he smiles and gently places her in his lap, genuinely trying his very best to be what no one ever thought he could be:
Human.
Maybe it isn't bliss? Should I really be able to feel bliss? Whatever it is, at least it is not grief. And that is just as good to me.