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Diaryland
The Burden is Gone June 12, 2005 @ 6:25 p.m.
I got up into the garage rafters today and went through toys and keepsakes with Jonathan, figuring out what to keep and what to dispose of. My mom has finally agreed to part with the duplos, which Stacy hasn't used in years. It was clear before, but things like this just reiterate it - our generation of the Firth kids is done with young childhood. Stacy and Alex will be teenagers not too long from now, and Michelle and Brian are in high school. Jonathan graduates from high school this week, and I just finished my undergrad. If the toys we save will get use again, it will be when us kids begin having kids of our own.
I put away more things into my keepsake bin, now completely full, and freed up another bin to put away binders, notebooks and yearbooks. For the last year I wanted to have these things in my closet shelf, but now its time for them to go into a more long term storage as I prepare for the next stage of my life.
As I always enjoy doing when times like this come around, I read through the messages my friends and classmates had written for me. God, how can years go by for older people? So much has happened in four years for me it was like an aeon passed. I really am a different person now. More confident and less set perhaps than I used to be. Which is good, because looking back I am not happy for the most part with who I was. Smart yes, but without the perspective to use it well. I've always known I was insecure, but recently, I realized that at the same time I was, paradoxically, completely arrogant and pretentious. No wonder I was so unapproachable for so long.
There was a Buffy episode in the final season that really resonated powerfully for me in relation to this topic. In an amusing turn of events, Buffy meets up with an old classmate, now vampire, and he decides he'd rather counsel her before fighting things out. In the course of their conversation, she tells him that for the longest time, she hasn't been able to accept her friends' affection on a deep level - because although she knows they care for her, somehow it doesn't matter to her. The years of isolated experiences and burdens she had to take on as a hero made her feel cut off and so different she had trouble relating. Buffy told him that although she was ashamed to feel this way, there were times when she actually felt like she was better than her friends. And at the same time, through her guilt and ostracism, the worst person of all.
As the season neared its end, the friends had a fight when they disputed Buffy's leadership. She became blinded by her emotions and threatened to get people killed. Anya said something to her that also hit me - "you aren't better than us. You're just luckier."
At the end of the series, against all the odds, Buffy realizes the way both to make herself whole again and to defeat the evil she faces is to end her status as a lone and burdened hero. With the help of white magic, she makes all the girls in the world who had the potential to be slayers become slayers themselves. She is no longer the single chosen one, and as an army of slayers, they defeat the First.
Her world collapsing as she runs out of it, the burden is finally over. She no longer has to be different, for better or worse, yet she has become the most powerful person of all. Her friends ask her "what are you going to do now?" And she just smiles, because anything is now possible.
I feel the same.
"Details in the Fabric" - May 31, 2009
Not So Quick Questions - April 6, 2009
The Morning Stars - Lords of the 15 - April 9, 2009
Sincerity and Faith in Magic - April 10, 2009
Not So Quick Questions (2) - April 14, 2009
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