Watched TV. Got depressed. I should know better. It's just after working hard all the time, I just want to sink into a fictional world. It's so tempting. But it always makes me depressed.
When I say I watched TV, what I mean is I watched Buffy DVDs. I'm finishing off season 6. I think this may be only the second time I've watched these episodes. There are others that I've watched more times.
What I did not remember, what I may have missed the first time, was how Buffy was over-protective of Dawn throughout season 5 and 6, and how that fueled Dawn's rebellious behavior, but in the finale of season 6, Buffy finally sees her way to support Dawn's empowerment.
Season 6 resonates with me. It's about being stuck being a grownup, there are things that you just have to do, like go to a sucky job, because you have to do it and there's no one to take care of you. It's about feeling detached from the people around you. It's about wanting to escape from the hard dreariness of reality. One time, Buffy is shifting between two realities. Sometimes she's in her regular world. Other times she is in a mental hospital, being told that she has schizophrenia, and all that we have seen in the 6 seasons of the show has been part of her delusion. In that reality, her mother did not die and her parents did not get divorced. Her parents tell her that they love her and want to take her home and take care of her. She longs for that reality to be the real one. That's what I long for too, to have all the bad things go away, to just be loved and taken care of.
When I get lost in a fictional world, whether it's a DVD or a novel, it triggers depression, and what I feel in the depression is that I'm always working so hard, and people are always saying it's not enough. People always want me to be different. I long for someone to just say that I'm okay as I am, that I don't have to try to be something else. That's not as straightforward as it sounds. I mean, if I am bustling around trying to organize things, I don't want someone to say, "stop working so hard. I like you anyway." I want someone to say, "I see you bustling around organizing things, and I like you that way." I don't want people telling me to cheer up. I want people who can live with my darkness. That's why I liked Buffy's relationship with Spike. Because he's not going to tell her to cheer up.
I need another way to cope. Escaping reality with fiction just makes me miserable. I need a way to unwind that doesn't make me worse. I know things that work: music, dance, being outdoors, connecting with other people, being mentally engaged in a task. But when the time comes when I need something, I have this strong feeling that I don't want to do those things. But maybe I can have a strong will and do the things that I know will help me even when I don't feel like it.
I found a video on Facebook the other day of a kid singing "My Roots Go Down," a song written by Sarah Pirtle. I could learn that song and sing it when I'm feeling down.
No comments:
Post a Comment