SPOILERS WITHIN

I finally finished watching Eternal Love, yeah it took me a year and a half, procrastination is real.

Anyway it reminded me of Fruits Basket and Momiji. In Fruits Basket Momiji’s mom choses to forget him because she got traumatised by the fact that Momiji was cursed with the Sohma zodiac curse (read Fruits Basket or watch the new series). So because she forgets Momiji her mind heals and she’s able to live her life ‘happy’ because she doesn’t know she has a cursed son.

In Fruits Basket it is also asked would you rather forget bad memories and live a happier life or would you choose to remember?

Momiji would rather remember, even if the memories are bad as those memories are important.

In Eternal Love it’s similar but also not. Bai Qian has a horrible time as a human and she gets treated horribly by Su Jin…

SPOILER WARNING

 

Su Jin takes her eyes and tells her to commit suicide although human Bai Qian didn’t know, she just thought it was a portal to the human world. However when Bai Qian survives and her memories as a goddess are restored and she remembers everything that happened to her as a human she is distraught. It was a traumatising time for her honestly.

However good things happened too, she got a baby boy A Li.

But despite that she decides she wants to forget everything by drinking the elixir and if she drinks the forgetting elixir she cannot restore those memories. It’s permanent. She goes ahead and has her memories wiped.

She ends up meeting her husband again and her son but she doesn’t know who they are and thus has no connection with them.

Taking those two stories into consideration I thought to myself, if I were in Bai Qian’s position would I choose to forget?

The answer is a strong no.

For one, I would like to remember what an evil bitch Su Jin is so that next time she steps to me I can punch her in the face. I mean this chick is so evil! And there are things she tries to do that if Bai Qian remembered would not have worked. Like trying to make her jealous of Susu (Bai Qian’s human self’s name). If Bai Qian knew she was Susu then she would not have been tricked by that.

Second, memories change a person. When she was a human she had none of her goddess memories. Without those memories she lost the wisdom and the confidence she’d acquired over the years. As Susu she still had that fire but in a small dose. It was like something was missing.

So in the same way when she becomes a goddess again and remembers everything but decides to forget her human life trial she is cutting valuable things that she learned during that time.

Applying that to real life, there are experiences that I wish I never went through, they hurt me so much. However, having gone through them I learned so much. I know what to avoid, I know what I want and I know what I cannot and will not tolerate.

My third point would be, if you erase bad memories then you could be erasing really important things too. With Momiji’s mom she was clearly going through an intensified post partem depression. She could have gotten therapy instead. Instead they hypnotise her to forget. What if one day she remembers and realises she abandoned Momiji? What will she feel?

Or even Bai Qian, yes she got to erase the painful memories but she also lost memory of her son. I think that’s what got to me the most. Her poor son lost his mother and then when they found her again he was so excited but she didn’t know him.

I think it’s better to get therapy and to work through the trauma, obviously this depends on the trauma, but things like what happened in Fruits Basket and Eternal Love I think can be worked through with professional help.

Then afterwards you come out much stronger.

What are your thoughts?

Would you rather forget or remember?