I've been asked why my life so often seems to revolve around fictional, pixelized characters. And today, for whatever reason, I started to think about it, and this is what I came up with.
To me, television is something of a shallow lover. Despite all the discontinuities and the disappointments, I remain ever faithful, because part of me longs for those moments when I've turned off the lights and let go of time, and the world falls away as my screen whispers vague promises of love and joy and beauty and fulfillment, as it assures me that pain is as sweet as it is transient, that there is no one too distant, too guarded, or too damaged to find both meaning and acceptance. The falseness of it doesn't matter; it's just the feeling, just the response.
I used to read a lot when I was a kid. I wasn't what one would call a prolific reader – I just tended to read the same things over and over again, constantly searching around for the feeling I got out of one passage or another, and then savoring it once I found it. And it was always the same person that I looked for, across authors and genres: a woman on the outside (sometimes by choice, but generally by circumstance) who slowly builds herself the family she never had – or, to be more accurate, a family builds itself around her, often without her knowledge or request. Generally, she still remains the outsider to some degree, never fully integrating within this family, even though she is its core, and while she may abuse its members, or go off without them for long stretches of time, upon her return or at any hint of threat it will rally around her without hesitation, so strengthened is it by its love, trust, and faith in her. Above all she is strong, and she is right, and she is damaged, and she is plagued by demons, and her conviction will carry both her and her little band through the Gates of Hell in the hope that there she may find solace, though she never truly will.
Feeling generally isolated myself, the Woman became something of a guiding force. I trusted in her saga and her arc, I took faith in the kindness she both exhibited and was afforded, and I loved her fully, unconditionally. She was the ideal, the god I never believed in, and I internalized her as such. Without friends or religion to guide me, I strove to become her, and, once I had done so, I quickly came to realize that the world wasn't adapting around me, that my isolation (which predated my recognition of the Woman) wasn't being breached by anyone looking to save me from myself, that friendships were weak and trustless and selfish, and that life was boring and monotonous. I would never slay monsters; I would never save the world; I would never travel between countries on horseback, restless and determined. Long before I had even entered high school, the world was a place I desperately longed to avoid, and so I did, throwing all of my emotional energy onto printed pages and, eventually, moving pixels. Under the auspices of the Woman, I became an idealist, paradoxically convinced that loyalty and love were as fictional as the stories I so desperately consumed.
Since then, little has changed for me. I've found people – both myself and others – to be constant sources of disappointment. The thing about idealism is that ultimately it's a lonely way to live, and often when I find myself seeking joy and fulfillment, I end up mostly finding emptiness and groundless sentiment. Often I find myself struggling against the recognitions I made in my childhood: that life lessons don't come gift-wrapped from the mouths of friends or strangers, that heroes live mostly in the stories, and that greatness and strength and courage are not traits of great relevancy in this culture of menial jobs and hollow friendships and easy lives. It's true that I'm not starving or cold or dying, that as far as 83% of the world is concerned, I lead a life of privilege and ease by virtue of being American, that my perception of hardship is vastly insignificant in the face of the poverty and desperation so many people face. But this knowledge does nothing to curb the ache for meaning and acceptance, the yearning for true friendships and a found family, and so I find myself constantly returning to the Woman and her sweet promise of humanity, even if I no longer entirely believe her. Living vicariously is, to some degree, the only thing I've learned how to do well, and so often she is my only source of comfort and stasis.
I sometimes wonder who I would have turned out to be if I had never found the Woman, or if I'd never internalized her to the degree that I did. Maybe part of the substance of other people's happiness is that they don't spend so much time trying to unlock the secrets of it. Maybe it's not that joy is complex, it's just that I fail to recognize it. It's equally possible that I'm just a nutcase, that rumination is unproductive, and that people give up on me because I'm difficult to be around. In any case, such is the state of my life, and for whatever reason, it feels good to admit it.
And on that note, I return to Sherlock.
No comments:
Post a Comment