this - what I'm feeling/ thinking/ doing right now - is sort of what I meant on the first, when I wrote that online communities where you connect based on a common interest can't compare to friends you connect with based on identities and support in their interests. I... watch Joan of Arcadia. early this season they introduced a character that Joan was supposedly really close to at a 'crazy camp' she went to over the summer. at first, I didn't think I could handle it because it just reminded me too much of the friends I have and had from Rogers. then, it pissed me off because I didn't feel they were doing it justice; it seemed like they were turning the friend into a foil for Joan, which - as a writer - struck me as supremely stupid. it reduced both Joan and Judith to more one-dimensional characters. Joan was the good girl Judith led astray, etc. last week, they started to pull out of that dynamic more successfully. this week, Judith died. and I knew it was coming. I broke my general spoiler-avoidant policy after seeing the preview for this week's episode. I didn't feel like I could handle watching it and not knowing what would happen. I guess I knew it would mess with me enough even if I knew beforehand whether or not Judith made it. so I knew it was going to happen. and I knew that just before she died Judith was going to say, "this is the first time in my life I really want to live"... and honestly, I think that would have been enough to keep me sobbing for a few hours. because it's just too much the same. taken away just as life starts to work, before it's ever really good. taken away from friends who really love you too too soon.
and I guess... I'm most surprised by how little it took to start the tear-factory. I don't think the episode was even half-over before I started crying, and I didn't really stop until after it had ended. I decided it's probably a little amped this week because... this week was so amazing. in terms of the things I did and the proof that my life is changing, that I'm changing (and living) my life. nothing like progress to make me remember all the girls I started this process with... all the fight we've put up, and the fact that - without regard to that fight, without regard to our love, without regard to the fact that we had enough pain - some of us have lived and some of us are gone.
I just don't feel like that's the type of thing you post in a JOA community in response to the show. and I guess I prefer to share it with my friends, to lean on the people who really know me. so, yeah. an interesting cap on this week... so...
this is just a shout-out to my girls. how much I love and miss them. how much of who I am they influence, how I carry all of them with me everywhere I go.
how I wish we all could make it. how I wish we all could make it. how I wish.
juggle, jojo, juggle...
~me