A Reflection
So, officially it’s now over, Two thumbs up for the finale, my fluttering heart is full.😊
While so much lessons can be learned from each of the characters, both main and supporting, I’d like to delve deeper on the underlying issue of everything that transpired in the drama.
When we got a glimpse of each character’s past in the previous episodes, we somehow knew that it has to do with their present state, to further show characters’ development, and ultimately to give us an idea where the conflict started.
The main characters, Ko Mun Yeong, Mun Kang Tae, and Mun Sang Tae are individuals who wrestle with their pasts.
One is a sociopath who still has nightmares and hallucinations caused by her childhood trauma and the tremendous fear of her mother.
Another one is a mature brother’s keeper who still has to deal with longing for his mother’s love and letting go of the suppressed emotions, pain and hurt he had to put up with because of being left alone with a great responsibility at such a young age.
And the other one has a trauma-induced fear of butterflies, as these symbolize his mother’s murderer, and has forced him to block his memories from that scene as a form of defense mechanism.
The gruesome pasts still chase them out in the darkness, throwing them into the pit of emotional rollercoaster rides.
Scientifically and psychologically, the childhood experiences of the characters have played a great role in who they became as adults. Even their fears came a very long way from their past!
“The early years of an individual’s life are crucial for their emotional, social and physical wellbeing. This has an overall impact on their personalities as an adult. Research says that the early years play a significant role in brain development too. A person’s early experiences both with their parents as well as with the outside world profoundly affect their future physical, cognitive, emotional and social development.”
parenting.firstcry.com
From the moment of your birth up to your third to seventh year alive, you are being shaped by whatever values, training, and experiences you acquire and will probably carry those all throughout your life.
Of course, with the interception of environmental factors, you won’t probably carry them as is all your life.
But this still makes sense, you became a child once in your life, and it is the season when you are as soft as a clay that whatever shape your sorroundings want you to be, you become one. And as you are shaped into that, you will find it hard to take another shape when you are older.
It’s Okay To Not Be Okay is just fiction but no matter how fictional it may be, it mirrors reality at some point, thanks to its writers’ ability and the production’s effort to connect to the audience especially at times like these. There is a fine line between the characters and their respective past, and the reason for their struggles? It’s because of their unreconciled pasts.
This pictures the reality that many of us are facing today. Others are in denial, some are aware and some are not. This suffering manifests in so many ways and we suffer for so many different reasons, but there is always a psychological, physiological, and environmental element to it.
AND IT’S OKAY TO NOT BE OKAY.
It means having these struggles that seem to weigh us down at a moment doesn’t mean we are inferior and does not make us less of a person. We may suffer but it does not mean we give up living. Life sometimes knocks us down but it does not mean we stay that way.
“So don’t forget any of it. Remember it all, and overcome it. If you don’t overcome it, you’ll always be a kid whose soul never grows.”
The Boy Who Fed on Nightmares
Emotional healing is easier said than done, the path may be rough and thorny, but it is plausible.
That Girl, Novate 
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