Thankful

So, this time of year, especially today, people like to make a big show of sharing what they're thankful for.  It gets annoying, because it ends up (if you're bitter and cynical like me), reading like a list of accomplishments. Like bragging.  "Oh my god, I'm so thankful for my wonderful husband and my new house and my beautiful new baby and my great job etc etc etc."  Eff you, Facebook acquaintance.

The last few years, (what with the bitterness and cynicism), I have had a hard time coming up with things to be thankful for.  My friends and family, of course, are wonderful.  And I have...all my limbs?  I guess I'm grateful for that.  I have made it through my whole life without coming in contact with poison ivy.  That's a win.  But there are a lot of things that I am not pleased with, in general, in my life.  You know, #firstworldproblems, and all that.  But a lot of things that other people are thankful for, I do not have, and therefore cannot be thankful for them.

But I realize there is something I am thankful for.  And it's sort of an unusual, joking-but-actually-serious thing.

I am thankful for pop culture.

I am not kidding.  I mean this seriously.  And not in a simple, "Oh I enjoy this movie/tv show/book" kind of way.  As you well know, as a reader of this blog and most likely someone who has...ever met me, I am pretty obsessive about different pop culture.  I don't know how to just like something.  I have to dive into it, and absorb every bit of it, and become obsessed with it, and learn everything about it, and contemplate it, and discuss it, and philosophize about it.

I have been this way for, probably forever, but the first really serious obsession I can remember was NSYNC.  And there have been many since then.  To name a few: Harry Potter, Lost, SVU, Legally Blonde: The Musical, Twilight, Criminal Minds, Celtic Thunder, Cracked, American Horror Story, High School Musical, Sherlock, CSI: Miami, Doctor Who, The Hunger Games.  And that's only the tip of the iceberg.  There have been SO MANY more.  With varying degrees of embarrassment.

Sometimes I can see these things coming, and sometimes they catch me by surprise.  There are certain books I hold off reading, or TV series I hold off watching on Netflix, because I know they will take over my entire life, and I need to focus on other things at the moment/am in the midst of another obsession already.  But sometimes a new show will premiere, and I fall in love with it immediately.  Or I'll go see a movie and it will blow my mind.  Or I'll catch a rerun of some show randomly while channel surfing.  And the rest is history.  I don't watch any movie or tv show without immediately IMDb-ing it afterward, sometimes in the car on the way home.  I will watch and rewatch, visit fansites, devour interviews and clips on youtube, learn all about every person involved with it, read fanfiction about it, philosophize about coming episodes, etc.

And the thing is, I LOVE these obsessions.  I am lost without them.  When I reach the point where my interest in something fades from daily obsession to just general interest and like, I hate it.  I feel lost, and unmoored, and restless, and find myself knowingly (or unknowingly) searching for my next obsession, the next mode of filling my days with joy.

I realized, somewhere along the way, that these obsessions are important to me for more than just basic, surface reasons.  I am the worst kind of basement-dwelling nerd, in that I live my life vicariously through others.  This has long been a problem of mine in the real world: getting wrapped up in friends' drama and crushes and whatnot, while having no personal stake in the matter whatsoever.  It's not that I'm nosy, it's just that I desperately want to be involved, and to experience those things for myself.  I have not had much success in several important areas of my life, and find myself to be, in many ways, emotionally stunted.  I have yet to, and there's a great possibility I will never, experience many of the joys and sorrows and adventures and experiences that form most people's lives.  It is mind-numbing to go through life every day feeling nothing, and experiencing nothing, and not ever changing.  So I tend to latch on to other people's experiences.  Pretend they're my own.  Pretend I can relate.

If I focused to much on the dull dreariness of my own life, I would quite literally go crazy.  So I've found it necessary to escape.  To latch on to other people's experiences, even if those people and experiences are fictional.  I escape into a book, or a movie, or episodes of a TV show.  And it has changed my life for the better.  I feel like I've fallen in and out of love many times over, traveled the world, solved crimes, met new and exciting people, gone on adventures, sang and danced, all without leaving the comfort of my own home. I haven't.  I'm aware.  I'm not that crazy.  I know I haven't done any of these things.  But like an alien studying the human race, I feel like I can almost imagine what such things must be like.

My obsessions first started back in high school, when I realized my life wasn't exactly following the same course as everyone else's.  While I was happy and social and everything, it seemed like I was always there, but never involved.  Which has pretty much become the story of my life.  I sit back and watch as everyone else falls in and out of love, and becomes successful, and does exciting things, and before I know it, years have passed, and I have done nothing.  I have been on the sidelines the whole time, and I didn't even realize it.  And when I actually take the time to think about it, and stop the daily distractions and focus on what I have and have not done, and where I'm at in my life, it is awful.  Because without the people around me, I am nothing.  I have nothing to show for myself.  It's like staring into an empty void.

And so, I fill that void with things.  Oftentimes fictional things.  These people and places and things I have grown to love, though I have never actually met them, or experienced them, or whatnot, because they do not actually exist.  It's like I'm ticking boxing on the life experience chart, and I am very nearly able to convince myself that these are my own life experiences, and that if I am able to spout pop culture stories and anecdotes on command, it will almost be like those stories belong to me, and actually happened to me.

And I am grateful for that.  Because if I had none of that, none of those places to escape to, I would be absolutely lost.  I would be miserable.  But I am not.  I am able to get through the day if I know I can come home and watch an episode or five of Doctor Who before I go to bed.

Anyway, this turned into more of a depressing feelings rant than I really intended it to.  Shocking.  But it wasn't meant to be like that.  It was meant as a genuine expression of thankfulness for all of the wonderful creative people that have created these worlds and people that have gotten me through my days.

Hopefully, I won't always be like this.  Hopefully, someday I will find a real live person to obsess over, who is just as obsessed with me as I am with him.  And he will whisk me away on wondrous adventures of our very own.  But until then, I've got this.  And this will do.