Smile and put on a happy face

Epilogue: Sophie's diary

11.15.1981 

I´ve had this old, dusty diary for fifteen years. I never found the time and I lacked conviction to write anything down. I guess I´ve been too busy. The rhythm of the everyday barely allows me time to take a breath, even less to organize a thought that´d be worth writing down. But today I feel like the only comfort comes from filling these blank pages, because I´m sure no person would want to hear what I have to say. This will be the first and last thing I write, for it seems that after today everything has lost its meaning. If someone ever finds this diary and reads these words, I hope they understand them. I hope that through them they can remove the blindfold that we all have over our eyes. I hope they can see Arthur the way I see him.  

I´d be lying if I said that Arthur caught my attention the first time he crossed my path. I had seen him many times before and yet I had never really seen him. How often we wander around blindly through life. It seems like our senses have grown used to boredom in such a way that we´re no longer capable of hearing all the sounds, of enjoying the smell of flowers or of distinguishing all the colors that the day has. There are souls that have a certain color and Arthur´s had a very special one. 

It was my little daughter who made me notice that in the apartment next to ours lived a man of the most unique nature. “He´s the man who laughs, mom”, said Gigi. I wondered why a simple clown would fascinate a girl her age so much. It was when I saw Gigi sneaking up to his door to bring him presents that I worried and I must admit, I had bad thoughts about it. I scolded her but she just said “I bring him presents because he´s sad”. “I thought you said he was the man who laughs”, I said and she simply responded “Yes, but I´ve also heard him cry …” It was then that I felt curious to meet the man and when I approached him and spoke to him for the first time, something about him captivated me. 

He looked sad and beaten down and yet there was a sweet melody in his voice and a melancholic shine in his eyes, like a tiny spark so powerful that it could turn into a fire and at the same time so weak that it could die out at any given moment. And even though he rarely looked up, when he did, his eyes seemed like open doors into an unknown world. I knew with certainty that this man was incapable of hurting anyone. You may find it absurd, but I´m still convinced of that. 

There are people who are beautiful in their looks, others are beautiful in the things they say and others are beautiful in the way they are…Arthur was beautiful in his very core. There was a beauty in him that was both tragic and poetic. Even though simple on the surface, Arthur was full of mysteries and contradictions. Shy by nature, he lived far from everyone and wished to be close to someone. He found it hard to stop laughing and it had always been impossible for him to really laugh. He seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Never had a soul lived so far from paradise, like an angel born in hell who in spite of everything lived on because that´s what life demanded of him. 

I´ve never seen a body that being so fragile bared so much pain, nor a soul that being so pure endured so much torment. And even though the world didn´t have a heart for him, he hadn´t let his own heart give up. All the love that society had denied to him, he didn´t deny it to anyone, and all the comfort that was missing in his own life, he gave it to others. His heart resided in the songs he sang to the children at the hospital, it lived in the shape of a blue balloon he gave to my daughter and in the shape of a paper flower that his hands made for me.  

I held Arthur in my arms the day the world finally broke him apart completely. Never had anyone´s tears been so bitter, never had a body contained so much grief. I felt that something inside him had shattered forever and that nothing and nobody could ever put it back together. And yet, I tried. 

When I close my eyes , I can still feel his warmth between my arms, I feel his crying on my shirt, I hear his tortured laughter and his sobs, I still feel his breathing, I feel my lips on top of his…I still feel his heart beating underneath my hand. 

“Are you real, Sophie?” I chastise myself for not seeing it sooner. I thought it was the confusion caused by the fever he had that night and I left my favorite handkerchief tied to his wrist so he knew it hadn´t been a dream. I watched him sleep for several hours until the light of dawn came in through the window. I didn´t want to wake him. There was a certain peace in his sleep. For a second I thought I saw his lips smile. I figured he slept happily, knowing that he was loved. 

My heart skipped a beat when I found the letter he left under my door. There was a red colored kiss on the paper I still keep next to me. It was a farewell, the last words of a heart that was bleeding to death. It was too late when I finally understood that Arthur had stopped distinguishing between the things that were real and those that were not. He was convinced that only in a fantasy he could be loved. He told himself that being who he was, he had no right to love. 

I ran out of the house but as son as my feet set out on the street, I realized I didn´t even know where to start looking. I went back inside crying, feeling guilty for not knowing enough about Arthur as to know where he might have gone and the helplessness of knowing that something bad would happen and there was nothing that I could do to prevent it. Those were the longest hours of my life until the city started to burn and I suddenly saw his face on every cannel. 

I wish I had met Arthur in another space and time, in a place far away from here, beyond the rainbow, a place where the sun would shine and where the truth wasn´t sad.

My heart breaks when I imagine him locked up in a cold room inside Arkham. Life finally tore apart his wings, for Arthur was like a beautiful crystal bird. But when crystal breaks, it can never be repaired. The same glass that was once so fragile and beautiful becomes a cutting edge weapon when it shatters.

Everyone wonders what was wrong with him, but nobody wonders what was wrong with the people who hurt him, who beat him up for fun and mocked him every day. What was wrong with the people who should have loved him and instead abandoned him? You wonder what illness plagued Arthur to do what he did? Why don´t you ask yourselves what´s wrong with this despicable society that drove a good hearted man to the limit and pushed him into the abyss? Yes, it was Arthur´s fingers that pulled the trigger but on top of them were the fingers of all of us. Look yourselves in the mirror if you can stand the disgust and see your own hands stained with blood.   

I don´t condemn Arthur and I understand the motives of him whom everyone know calls Joker, for I had the privilege of knowing the man behind the name. Behind the clown mask, behind his worn out clothes, his pale skin, his beautiful and sad green eyes and behind that tortured laughter there was a heart that dreamed…and who knows…maybe hasn´t stopped dreaming. 

THE END

I want to thank all of you who followed this story to the end!! I hope you´ve enjoyed this journey as much as I have. For the time this adventure lasted, with your likes and comments, you made me feel special. You made me feel like I had wings. I can´t ever thank you enough. My story is nothing but an adaptation and the credits belong to the mind and heart of Todd Phillips and to the wonderful performance of Joaquín Phoenix, two men I love and admire.

If this small tribute to Joker produced in you a feeling, an emotion or even if it made a tear be shed, then I´ve fulfilled my purpose, for I believe that stories are there to make us feel…to remind us that we are alive.

The end of something can or cannot be the beginning of something else. I have a second part in mind for this story. If you like the idea and want to know what becomes of Arthur and Sophie, let me know in the comment´s section and I will gladly write the sequel for all of you. 

Thank you again for all the love!!

Yours sincerely,

Gwynplaine89