We have all heard the phrase “history is written by the victors” or some version thereof. This is nowhere more evident than when histories are compared only for the loser to find they have no part in the other’s story, having their presence obliterated through denial. When histories of the same time period are brought together the incongruities become all the more apparent, forcing the one left out to rehash memories of a time of loss only to realize their insignificance in the greater scheme of things. They were never the second part of a story, but a minuscule inconsequential strand easily erased from the books. The removed ones have to recognize their own conceit at ever thinking they were important enough to be noted as a loss, but only after they have built a future on the false hopes of a negated past.

Particularly when forced repeatedly to reconsider the past is the left-out party bombarded with evidence contrary to their existence and filled with alternate narratives too painful to conceptualize. Fond memories are redrawn into the shape of a new history that the defeated never asked to read, complete with pictures to solidify their fall from favor, shown to them from every angle to depict the entire panorama of their failure.

And as histories are rewritten, the losers continue to remain forgotten, only to be disturbed from their slumber to have their destruction rubbed in for another’s cruel curiosity. They are not left to weep in peace, and those writing histories ignore them as they did in their books, rendering their notions invalid as a final stroke against their reality – they were not a chapter in anyone’s book… not even a page.