There’s always something ahead to love. If you’re a nerd (like me) and really, really love things maybe you can identify with the cycle:
- Discover the thing
- Love the thing
- Really really love the thing
- Experience an emotional break when the thing comes to an end
- Get tattoos of the thing to let it live forever on your body (and make sure nobody forgets you love the thing)
- Convince yourself that you’ll never love anything as much as that thing ever again
- Find, with some surprise, that not only are there more things to love but your heart has room to love more things
- But also never ever stop loving the thing
I go through this cycle in mini or macro revolutions. Harry Potter, for example, wasn’t satisfied until I repeated step five three times. Some fandoms I can skip that step altogether.
It is fulfilling to really, really love stuff. But it is also emotionally exhausting. As I came out of my second screening of Avengers: Endgame (no spoilers) this morning, I felt both the tear tracks on my cheeks and the settling start in my heart. But I needed to see it twice opening weekend – two three hour screening in three days – to kickstart the processing of an ending. I’ll go at least once more in theaters, probably in a few weeks.
I did a rewatch this past month of the majority of the twenty plus films that led up to Endgame. (And it mattered more than I thought it would that I did – no spoilers, but holy cow). Sound familiar? In February I did the same thing with nine seasons of How To Train Your Dragon TV episodes leading up the final movie. Last year I did complete rewatches of Voltron twice in anticipation of each of the last two seasons and got up at 4 am on release day to watch the final season in its entirety before work.
It’s like I orchestrate my life to have the most emotional punch as possible. Which, okay, yes, I do it on purpose. If I’m going to feel the things, I want to feel them as deeply as I can. But it leads to some killer emotional hangovers.
And sometimes I think I’ve run out. I’ve had a lot of endings lately – decade long sagas coming to a close. And it’s hard to tell at the beginnings of new fandoms if they will equally penetrate your life (looking at you, Dragon Prince, but I’m hopeful). But then, I’ve said that before. And there’s always something to love. To lean into an obsession. To make questionable sleep schedule exceptions to binge watch at 4 am.
In between, though, I breathe. I rewatch sitcoms. I read books that rock my world a little more gently. I let the dust settle. And then I dive in. Again and again. It’s a cycle. It’s joy. God, isn’t it good to love things?
With Love,
Natalie