I always felt different. Too different. I had so many secrets but no one to share them with. No one I trusted. I don’t think I knew more than a hundred people until I left for NYC. I think I’ve more than tripled the number of Facebook friends in just these three or four years of college. So my only outlet pre-internet/social media boom, was tv shows. But back then they still didn’t have a lot a diversity. There was no one I could really relate to. So what I have to say in this post might sound completely stupid, but this is how TV saved my life.
So by now you know I was suicidal since I was about 11 and entering the 6th grade. TV was my life. The life I wanted. The life I couldn’t have. TV was my escape from this miserable reality. I still kept up with whatever superheroes shows were on. I think Teen Titans was still big and Smallville was in its prime. But I was also totally a Disney kid. If it was on Disney, I wanted to watch it. Same with Nickelodeon. I also watched a lot of (probably too much) detective murder mystery shows. Now like I said this was before Netflix had online streaming. You know when Blockbuster was still big (if you’re old enough to remember that; damn I’m getting old). Anyways you had to wait a week and stay tuned at that “same Bat-time” on that same “Bat-channel” if you wanted to see the next episode. If you missed it, that was it. You had to wait for the right re-run if you wanted to catch up (so archaic and medieval, right?). Before the DVR we used a VCR with tapes that you had to rewind to watch or else you’ll run out of tape, and then there was the danger of recording over something you haven’t watched yet.
Ok so here’s where you might start judging me.
But remember how I said life was always just a game to me and I had it mastered and was basically #winning at life? (OMG this was before anyone knew what a hashtag was.) And back to what I said about the characters I made up being too OP to keep things interesting. Well, here’s how it all gets connected. I’ve mastered my life. Perfect scores without studying. I had a nearly photographic memory. I could basically close my eyes and “control F” through the pages that I’ve read for any text book test question. I could read chapters from the Bible a few times while playing video games and have it memorized enough to recite every word perfectly. A few times I was able to read a speech one time and then had it completely memorized and I didn’t have to perform it for another month. What happened to that? My best guess is age and maybe the fact that I beat the shit out of myself with a baseball bat a few times a week. I hated it. I hated being so different. I read/heard that every time you hit your head you lose a few brain cells. So life was too easy. I was too OP and I didn’t feel normal. It was also too much pressure being expect to be perfect. I’m half Asian, but I don’t have those strict pushy parents where an A- is failure. I didn’t need anyone to say it out loud. I’ve established a pattern of excellence and I could only go downhill. And being at the top of the class means everyone is looking up to you. You’re the goal to beat. If anyone ever got a higher score than me, it was like they won the lotto. But you can only give me so many stickers. You can’t reward me for improving if there’s no room for improving. I totally should have skipped a grade or two early on, but hey I’m glad I ended up doing high school in three years. High school was it’s own kind of hell. So yeah, the concussions weren’t originally from depression, at least not the same kind that drove everything else. But TV kept me guessing, wanting more. Even though I learned how to predict patterns of television writing, there was always some plot twist that gave me the good kind of feels. It was the something new that my life stopped offering me. So yeah, sometimes when I contemplated suicide, I thought ok maybe I’ll wait till I find out what happens on next week’s episode. And ok I can end myself when this show ends. But before it ends, there’s a new show that I like that’s just getting good. So in a way the addictive TV marketing saved my life. It gave me a reason to live. A mystery that I wanted to see solved. It’s a pretty shallow reason to live, but it kept me alive long enough to find a real reason to make it to next week.
Ok so here’s where you might start judging me.
But remember how I said life was always just a game to me and I had it mastered and was basically #winning at life? (OMG this was before anyone knew what a hashtag was.) And back to what I said about the characters I made up being too OP to keep things interesting. Well, here’s how it all gets connected. I’ve mastered my life. Perfect scores without studying. I had a nearly photographic memory. I could basically close my eyes and “control F” through the pages that I’ve read for any text book test question. I could read chapters from the Bible a few times while playing video games and have it memorized enough to recite every word perfectly. A few times I was able to read a speech one time and then had it completely memorized and I didn’t have to perform it for another month. What happened to that? My best guess is age and maybe the fact that I beat the shit out of myself with a baseball bat a few times a week. I hated it. I hated being so different. I read/heard that every time you hit your head you lose a few brain cells. So life was too easy. I was too OP and I didn’t feel normal. It was also too much pressure being expect to be perfect. I’m half Asian, but I don’t have those strict pushy parents where an A- is failure. I didn’t need anyone to say it out loud. I’ve established a pattern of excellence and I could only go downhill. And being at the top of the class means everyone is looking up to you. You’re the goal to beat. If anyone ever got a higher score than me, it was like they won the lotto. But you can only give me so many stickers. You can’t reward me for improving if there’s no room for improving. I totally should have skipped a grade or two early on, but hey I’m glad I ended up doing high school in three years. High school was it’s own kind of hell. So yeah, the concussions weren’t originally from depression, at least not the same kind that drove everything else. But TV kept me guessing, wanting more. Even though I learned how to predict patterns of television writing, there was always some plot twist that gave me the good kind of feels. It was the something new that my life stopped offering me. So yeah, sometimes when I contemplated suicide, I thought ok maybe I’ll wait till I find out what happens on next week’s episode. And ok I can end myself when this show ends. But before it ends, there’s a new show that I like that’s just getting good. So in a way the addictive TV marketing saved my life. It gave me a reason to live. A mystery that I wanted to see solved. It’s a pretty shallow reason to live, but it kept me alive long enough to find a real reason to make it to next week.
No comments :
Post a Comment
How does that make you feel?