05.13Syndicated Dreams
I had a dream last night that’s stuck with me, and washed my day with an undercurrent of sadness. It was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer dream, which for most people seems to bring to mind dusting vamps and fighting demon spiders. What Buffy was really about, at least in my view, was loss, and the pain of ‘growing up’. Especially the later seasons, which I’ve only seen some of. My dream was that kind of dream.
I was one of the second tier scoobies. A Dawn, or another kind of character that gets left behind when the big fight happens; one of the ones without any supernatural powers or crazy fighting skills. We were in the bottom of a wing of a huge building. Buffy and Willow were leaving. Going on the run or something. The implication was that we wouldn’t see each other again. I asked her for her phone number, but she said she couldn’t give it to me, since it would be dangerous. I wrote down mine to give to her, I think, but what really struck me, and is still with me, is the intense feeling of loss. It was like a huge pit of sadness just opened up inside me.
I know this sounds a little stupid, but I get that feeling sometimes when TV shows I really love get cancelled. I got it when I’d watched all the episodes of Tenchi Muyo. I got a little bit of it when I found out that my favorite show, Home Movies, was getting canned by Cartoon Network.
I think I must have really big loss issues. I guess that’s what happens when you move around a bunch when you’re a kid. Lack of stability, not having anything to hold on to, the unrelenting desire to simply belong. It doesn’t help that I was a single child, and my parents were pretty distant.
I guess what I really needed was family, and TV shows just have an uncanny ability to tap into that need. Something about becoming a part of a group of people’s lives makes it very traumatic to lose.
I’m sorry for being such a downer, but I felt I needed to share. I’m don’t think casting this out into the great internet void is the answer, but maybe Buffy’s out there reading this and will drop me a line. Maybe we can all get together in the Summers living room and watch movies or something?
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