Hell was the journey but it brought me Heaven

A tribute to Clarke Griffin.

Clarke Griffin loses her father when she’s just a teenager because he is a hero. He believes people, his people, deserved the truth. Deserved to survive. That, gets him killed. The reason he dies is that but, however, the one who turned him in, is Clarke’s very mother. For years, his childhood best friend, Wells, takes the blame to not make Clarke hate her mother. So she spends years hating him. When she is still just 17, she was sent on earth with 99 teenagers and Bellamy. Here, starts her journey. At such a young age, she’s forced to lead a bunch of kids, to be the reasonable one, to turn her fear and emotions off to make her people survive. She surely inherites the strength, courage and selflessness from her father, but they’ve still always been in her somehow.

In season two, we see her killing the man she’s learnt to love after finding out he had cheated on a girlfriend Clarke knew nothing about with her. She tries to push her emotions down once again, because she ‘can’t allow herself to feel and be weak’ right? They teach her that love is weakness. That a true leader can’t feel to be a good one. So she doesn’t. We see her doing whatever she can, whatever, to save her people from the Mountain men, and struggling to do so. But she does it. In fact, ultimately, she needs to decide between operating a genocide by her (and Bellamy’s) hands to save their friends but living forever with this weight, or letting them die. Of course, she chooses the one. She bears it, so they don’t have to.

She gets blamed for that, too, when in the process her friend’s girlfriend dies. She’s so sorry. She’s so damn sorry and she hates herself. But she had no choice. She wants so bad to be a good guy, but how can she be a good guy when they live in such a world, where violence is their ordinary day? Where surviving means killing? Bellamy, her now friend, best friend, makes it a bit less heavy thanks to his hand on hers and his kind and meaningful words ‘Who we are and who we need to be to survive, are very different things.’, but Clarke can’t shake what she did off her mind. Her mind feels heavy, her heart too, so she decides that coming back home, to the camp, is something she can’t allow herself to do, not after all the people she killed to bring her own people home. She punishes herself, somehow, repeating those same words about bearing it so that all the people she loved won’t have to.

In season three, we first see her alone. She’s been alone for three months, trying to somehow punish herself because of all her sins. It’s not easy being in charge, she knows it, but it doesn’t mean she won’t feel guilty for everything she did to survive. Her journey goes on as they have to defeat another enemy, and for Clarke, it gets even harder when her own people and her own best friend, Bellamy, blame her for leaving. Sure, he cannot be blamed, we can see his pain and understand his side, but she was just trying to do what she thought was best after committing a genocide that will forever haunt her, for the rest of her life. As they start fighting side by side, Clarke also falls in love with the Commander, Lexa. She gets the opportunity to experience who she really is, and gives the audience the opportunity to see Clarke Griffin as the amazing bisexual lead she is. Her love story with Lexa is troubled: love is not easy when in war. She ends up losing her, too, who gets killed by mistake by Titus who was meaning to shoot Clarke instead. This, will always mean one thing for Clarke: she killed Lexa. Although that’s not true, she’ll always somehow blame herself for killing the person she loved. She’s with her in her final moments, and as hard as it is for her, she knows she can’t abandon her people now. She ends up sacrificing herself again at the end, trying to fight in the city of life to save her friends. She does. As always. But she finds out a new and very hard to accept threat. The the new season starts with this. And just another time, Clarke does whatever she can to save her people. This season, Clarke gets mistaken a lot. Because not everyone has the strength to make the choices that need to be made to save everyone, not everyone wills to take decisions that could haunt them forever to save the human face. Clarke is. Clarke does. And for this, she gets hated on, a lot. Sometimes, not even her friends see how whatever she does, everything she does, is for them. At the end of the season, Clarke sacrifices herself once again to send her best friends to space and make them survive. She ends up surviving the Praimfaya, but she’s left now alone in a burning and deserted planet. And she’ll stay there for 2.199 days, more than six whole years. She goes through some very challenging days, struggling against hunger, thirst, loneliness, heat. And last but not least, all the ghosts from her past. She meets Madi. And she immediately knows, from the moment she sees it, that that, that is her daughter. No one will ever be as important as Madi is to her, who fills her days now that her friends are either inside a bunker under the ground or in a metal box between the stars.

In season five, Clarke gets treated really badly. She doesn’t get a full and deserved thank you from all the people she saved by sacrificing herself for six years. She goes through so much more but she at the end gets to survive next to many of her friends.

She loses her mother, and, because of the bad writing that ultimately ruined her character at the very end of the season, her best friend, too.

Despite all, Clarke Griffin is, and will always be, the first bisexual lead on network television. She was a great example and representation for so many people around the world who saw themselves in her, me included. A brave and amazing bisexual woman who lead her people and always did whatever she could for them. She didn’t have to. She never had to. She could’ve not done it, but she did and she deserved so much better from the world. It stole her youth. It stole most of her life. It took so many people from her. They all took so much from her, first among them her innocence. She lost so many people throughout her journey, (her two best friends, her girlfriend, her father, her mother, allies, friends, enemies that became allies.) and lost so much of herself in the process. And no one, expect few exceptions, ever saw her for who she is or thanked her for her big and kind heart. Clarke’s soul is broken but she’ll always be the greatest character in television for me, because she gave me representation and made me visible, she gave me hope and acceptance, she made me understand who I am and how beautiful it is to be who you really are.

Clarke Griffin is my favorite character in the whole wide world and no one will ever come close to the absolute goodness her heart has. She loves people in an unique way. She cares about people more than any character I ever saw in television. The way she takes care of the people close to her, even if that means losing herself, inspires me and hurts me at the same time. She’s always just wanted peace, and she never achieved it even if there’s no one, no one, who deserved it more than her.

She’s unstoppable. A force of nature.

She is strong.

She is selfless.

She is brave.

She is kind.

She is compassionate.

She is resilient.

She is beautiful.

She is proud.

She matters.

She is Clarke Griffin.

So this is for you, Clarke.

Thank you for giving me so much of what I needed, thank you for being by my side all these years, thank you for being yourself, thank you for your heart and your words, for all the times you thought you weren’t enough but you were, for all the times you cried and all very few times you laughed and smile, for all the pain you had to endure throughout this journey and every soul you got to touch and change, for every time you inspired a young bisexual around the world and made them feel seen and validated, for every time you lost someone and every time you found yourself again, for every time you fell and every time you got up stronger than before.

You deserve to hear this, but you ARE a good guy. You ARE the hero of the story. You deserved the world, but the world never deserved you. I know you kept yourself from being weak too many times, but you can rest now.

You’re just a character, but I’ll always be thankful for you.

Rest easy now, it’s your time to get some rest.

I will love you, now, always & forever, even when no one else will.

May we meet again, Clarke.