December 16, 2012

• Seems like sleep is the enemy …

  … so I might as well be here?

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  So I wonder how much watching Buffy at a young age was healthy for me. What with the whole “do the right thing even if it kills you” theme, and the other “keep a stiff upper lip especially if it kills you” theme. Oh, and there’s the “let things stew in your head for as long as possible because you don’t want your loved ones to know you’re unhappy because that would make them unhappy” theme.

  I mean I had other stuff going on too. Having to be the eldest, most responsible one at home. Having to mentor a child so that he turns out right despite astronomical parental failures. Being forced to keep a stiff upper lip by parents who don’t give a shit and tell you so.

  Ok so there were lots of other things. But still. Maybe Buffy wasn’t the healthiest thing for me to consume as a kid.

  It’s actually really difficult to watch the show starting from season 5 because that’s when the show stops becoming a soap opera and starts becoming a bit too real. Buffy’s mom dies and her father was never around to begin with, her boyfriend bails, and the Big Bad is going to kill her sister and it’s just a matter of time. And Buffy might as well end herself right there – at this point she looks like a walking dead already – but she keeps going. And then that goes on for another 3 seasons. I don’t think Buffy even smiles in the last three seasons. It’s like the thesis of the last few seasons is “All you are is alone.” Isn’t that terrible? You can’t put stuff like that on national television!

  It was like after reading Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and being sad for a week. Except Buffy is too much like real life – a young adult woman who’s in over her head and trying so hard to make it even though there’s barely anything left of her. She’s just going through the motions. It’s a little too close to the heart. I think at some point it got brainwashy. Telling me again and again that this is how it has to be, that everything is difficult because it just has to be. That’s just how it is.

  It might’ve taught me a bit about taking the old one-two to the mental endurance, but nothing about how to build it back up again after teardown. And it probably wasn’t good in terms of optimism training for young minds.

  Okay I’m not always scary emo person. I’m not when I’m stable, but that isn’t tonight. And at those kinds of times (or at other times just for kicks), I still watch Buffy because it gets me. Why do we keep going? Why do we bother trying to do the right thing? Nobody knows. It doesn’t matter.

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  I don’t mean to be so emo and to alienate and scare people – but then I do. I need to recognize that something’s not right and I need to recognize it hard before it gets worse. I’ve been worse and I don’t want to go back. I need to keep saying it really loudly so I don’t keep leaving it on the to-do list, so I don’t grow content with stiff lips, until I make it stop.

   

  I’m back at home. I didn’t know how much I need Cosmo next to me to sleep. This is not a safe space. I don’t know how to make my mind be quiet. I’m afraid to close my eyes.

  • 7:42 am
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