My love letter to BtVS
October of… I had to do the math. It was 2013. I was starting my 3rd year of an extreme bipolar depression (yes, I know “extreme depression” is redundant, but dammit there’s depression and then there’s DEPRESSION. I’ve experienced many levels and this one was the worst.) Throughout 2013 I had become addicted to The Vampire Diaries, show and fanfiction. TVD resonated with me for so many reasons, but I think the most remarkable is because the vampires on the show have what they call a “humanity switch." Because, as vampires, their emotions are more pronounced than humans, as an evolutionary device they have the ability to turn their emotions off when it just gets too hard. This tends to turn them into psychotic murderers, because if they don’t have any emotions, why would they see humans as anything other than entertainment or food? I don’t see people as food, but as someone living with bipolar disorder I really connected with the idea of turning those emotions off.
Anyway, back to October 2013. After living in the depths of a severe depression for nearly two entire years, I had to, for the first time in my 15 year history of the illness, take an extended leave of absence from work. My doctor recommended 2 months, on the condition that she was able to find some kind of drug combination to make me somewhat-human enough to return to work within that time. So I spent the fall lying in bed in the dark with the remote in my hand and Netflix streaming horror movies.
Then there was Buffy. I’ll admit, under "normal” circumstances I would never have sat through this show. The bad special effects and ridiculous story lines were not really my cuppa, but I was depressed and didn’t really care about anything, so this show was as good as the next in my muted opinion. It was obviously the catalyst for TVD, so I might as well watch it. But slowly something happened. I saw a character whose life was one random tragedy after another and yet she kept fighting. Having a mood disorder is much like a series of random tragedies. Internal tragedies that seem to happen without rhyme or reason and you either keep going or you… don’t.
But, Buffy… she kept fighting. Even when she wanted to be dead, for legitimate reasons, she kept fighting for the people that did want to live. Maybe psychologists and other people will say that you shouldn’t focus your life on others, but when you are that low, any reason that works for you is a good enough reason to keep going. I saw a blog post one time that said something along the lines of “I knew something was really wrong when I found myself wishing no one loved me so that I wouldn’t feel obligated to keep living.” And boy if that doesn’t sum it up. Sometimes you might even feel resentful of the things that keep you around. And didn’t Season 6 demonstrate that perfectly? Just watch “Dead Things” again to see an intense illustration of this concept. I can tell you that even without having gone through what Buffy did, I have felt the temptation to beat on someone, anyone, the way Buffy beat Spike, just so that I could get the pain OUT. Luckily (not really) I grew up in a home where violence wasn’t uncommon, but rather than perpetuating the cycle I took those lessons as a reason to never hurt someone like that. Doesn’t mean the temptation wasn’t there, though. And when Spike says “You always hurt the one you love” it felt like the damn truth. Because no matter I’ve never laid a hand on my husband in anger, I easily could have. And the distance I put between us so that I wouldn’tact on my anger hurt him just as surely.
Which brings me to Spike. As I said earlier, I related to the vampires on The Vampire Diaries because of their intense emotions and the temptation they always have to “turn it off.” Spike obviously didn’t have such an option. Neither do I. Even when he was human, he obviously had a hard time with social interaction and was uncomfortable among his peers (aka humans.) So do I. The night he was turned into a vampire he experienced an extreme humiliation and heartbreak. As an empathetic person, and one that often wishes she could shun all social contact and contracts, I really do get why Spike became the way he was as a vampire. I have wished I could turn off my conscience, if only to escape the obligation of living. But Spike found another obligation in Drusilla. Someone that needed care. I’ve done that. When Drusilla left him for Angelus, he wouldn’t allow her to be killed via Angelus’ attempt to end the world. After the chip, when everything he knew was taken from him (yes, I know, evil!) Spike was suicidal. Until he found another reason to live. He grasped onto whatever he could to tie him to the world (sound like anyone else?) He was forced to interact with humans at a level he never had before, which led to his obsession and eventual love for Buffy. Spike is the epitome of adaptation, and I admire that. Adaptation is something I have struggled with due to both my depression and my anxiety disorder. Being forced to try to fit in where you don’t quite understand what’s expected of you, what the norm is, what kind of behavior will be shunned or accepted, it’s all part of the anxiety soup many of us live in. I admire Spike’s efforts. And when he finally realized that there was something he wasn’t “getting”, would never “get”, he went to get a soul. He said “Help me, I don’t want to be this person anymore. I’ll do anything to change it.”
Yeah, I’ve been there.
So here I am, relating to both Spike and Buffy for different but similar reasons, and loving them both so much for their resilience. I went back to work in a series of starts and stops, but by the end of 2014 I had to admit to myself that what I was doing just wasn’t working. It was both the hardest and easiest decision of my life to quit working, leaving a solid career I’d been building since I was 18 years old. Maybe it’s silly, but BtVS had a lot to do with the strength I found to make the decision. I could look at this story and these characters as examples of how I can go on and how I will go on, even if life isn’t anywhere close to how I pictured it.
BtVS as a show will always be my biggest love because it showed, by extreme means, through extreme characters with extreme personalities, the same extreme internal struggles that I face and will face my entire life. And obviously the show resonates deeply with people so much different than I, people who feel like and relate to Xander, Willow, Tara, Anya, Giles, Angel, Andrew, Cordelia, Oz, etc. I almost think that Joss Whedon somehow managed to capture in this one show an entire new set of archetypes for the entirely new social system we’ve found ourselves in. 10+ years and it still enraptures new viewers. Seems like a pretty big deal to me.
Plus, you know, it’s funny and has beautiful people. :)