I am saying goodbye to Buffy

In college and for a few years thereafter, I listened to Ani DiFranco. A lot. Call me a stereotypical liberal arts college student, but DiFranco’s music was the soundtrack to my life. When I finally started to grow up, though, I found I didn’t need such a dramatic and turbulent soundtrack. It didn’t ring true anymore. In fact, I developed a slight aversion to hearing it, since it brought back some rather annoying memories of my own histrionics.

I sold my albums, deleted the album copies from my computer, and moved on.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesn’t yet annoy me, but I’m finding that like DiFranco, it no longer rings true to me. It’s not a story that touches me anymore. It’s something that a former version of me was connected to, like a shirt I wore in high school that is familiar, but I would never grab it out of the closet and actually wear it.

When C-Man and I got together, I embarked on an ambitious plan to socialize him in all of the television shows I grew up with – and by grew up, I don’t mean the shows of my childhood. I mean the shows that got me through the transition between adolescence and adulthood: Buffy, Babylon 5, Farscape, Space: Above and Beyond, Millennium. I wanted him to get caught up on where I was coming from. Buffy should have been the key, it was the most charged with emotion.

We haven’t finished it.

And I’m just not motivated to make sure we do.

Part of my disconnection from Buffy is undoubtedly the lightening process I’ve been going through lately, where I’m keeping the things that mean something to me here and now – not just as an echo of the past. Part of it also springs from my deep disappointment with later seasons. Knowing that it’s all going to go badly downhill sucks the joy and hope out of rewatching the early days. When I watch Buffy, I remember that it used to mean something to me. I remember the almost visceral pain, the emotional shocks, the tears, the anxiety, the delight, and the soaring feelings of triumph that I felt as the characters went through their lives. I don’t feel it any more, though.

I have confidence that if I ever want a blast from the past, Netflix or something similar will be able to hook me up. But I don’t need Buffy around as a safety blanket anymore, connecting me to a past self that I’ve outgrown.

So the DVDs are on their way out the door.

Bye bye, Buffy. Thanks for everything you did for me.