Buffy the Vampire Slayer

For what is likely my last pandemic binge, I’m watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, both for the first time. I’m loving it, it’s incredible. My college roommate binged it our freshman year and made me watch a sex scene with Spike and Buffy, but other than that, I only knew its cinematic descendants: the Doctor Who reboot and Veronica Mars, to name a couple, series that I know and love well. But I knew know that Joss Whedon is a shitty human being, and I’ve thought of Charisma Carpenter’s experience often in the past few months. It’s impossible to unsee while watching the show. No matter how progressive it may be on the surface, no matter how groundbreaking the show was at the time. The poison seeps through. You see it in the misogynistic behavior of Xander and Riley, the “one true love” yet toxic nature of Angel’s and Buffy’s love story, how Cordelia is simultaneously built up and ground down as a character.

So it might surprise you that I’m not watching these shows in spite of but, perhaps, because of these things, even though I may not have set out to do so.

I ran across a Twitter thread from A.H. Reaume detailing the love and care that came from an ex, years after they had broken up, months after she had (temporarily) cut him off completely. Receiving a deep, familial love from an ex—and not just any ex, but one that caused equally deep, visceral pain—is a foreign concept to many, one that some even consider unhealthy. Some people are dragging her. But I have this story too and there is something to be said about what we gain from having these complicated, messy relationships in our lives. Because life is complicated and messy.

To borrow again from Reaume, she writes “The future writes the past. Then writes it again. And then again. And again.” So let me try:

The first draft of this story was written in high school and we were crazy about each other. We were both beginners and depressed for two totally different reasons. We were mean and abusive and it was a relief when we were finally done. Hurt people hurt people.

The second draft, years later, we sought comfort in each other. We spent holidays together and he ate Christmas dinner with my family. It was never about sex, but sometimes it felt like it was about warm bodies. I screamed at him for being racist and misogynistic and I was right. The 2016 election happened and a switch flipped. He spiraled as his worldview shifted to align with mine: it was a violent, abrupt process.

The latest reiteration has been about learning to set boundaries. How to love each other from afar with the knowledge our paths met when we were 14 and have been entangled ever since. How to honor both who we’ve been and what we’ve become. We say I love you when we hang up the phone. He sends me pictures of his son with toys my mother sends and signs Lola. I write many drafts trying to explain who we are to each other: each one comes up short.

I know this is just one side of the story. I know this is a story written from a specific moment in time with new context. I can never pretend that the new context does not exist, I can only rewrite the story. It is essential that I rewrite the story because it gives me the room to love this man more fully and more deeply, because it allows me to understand and love myself better, because it helps me show up for my other relationships, friendships and current partnership included.

In therapy, I sometimes talk about the shows I’m watching because I believe that we come to stories when we are ready for them, that when we stick with a show (especially when there are well over 100 hours of said show), that our brains are trying to process something through them. With Buffy and Angel, five and two seasons in, one of the questions they ask is: Can something codependent, abusive, and toxic turn into something beautiful, loving, and meaningful? These shows tell me yes. My experience and my faith tell me yes. Even though I’m often told otherwise.

Our memories, our stories, our histories are malleable. And there are limits to what a story can tell. There is only so much nuance you can pack into a story before the thread falls apart, before the point gets lost. When we tell a story, we refine it to suit our audience, even if that audience is just ourselves. But we hopefully allow that there are pieces from the story missing that we can’t know, that we can’t retrieve, and perhaps that’s where forgiveness really lies: forgive them, for they know not what they do.

All my love,
Kara