My personal essay done.

In the spring of 2003 during my freshman year of High School, I opened up my mailbox one afternoon to an issue of Entertainment Weekly with Sarah Michelle Gellar, the star of Buffy, on the cover. Initially excited at the prospect of reading an article about my favorite TV show, my face dropped the instant I read the headline: “Buffy Calls It Quits.” I dropped the magazine to the floor and stared into space in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t be real. I guess I always knew that the series couldn’t last forever, that it had to end eventually, but it all seemed so sudden. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” wasn’t just a show to me, it was therapy, a parent almost, teaching me life lessons and helping me grow up. Like millions of dedicated fans who read that magazine along with me, I felt my first real dose of heartbreak. It’s the spring of 1997, a Saturday afternoon, and I’m eight years old. My mother and my father had just finalized their divorce a few months earlier, so my mother, younger sister and I are living in a two family house which barely has room for all three of us. I’m comforted by the small living room, which brings the three of us closer together as we all sit on the couch watching TV or playing with toys. Actually, by this point it’s the four of us. My mother’s boyfriend Steve, who is now my stepfather, is basically living with us. Since I’ve known Steve since I was just a toddler, I don’t feel threatened by this, nor do I feel protective over my mother. However, I do feel that my once seemingly fine family is crumbling around me, and I do wonder why my Daddy left us. The sun is shining brighter than normal this Saturday, but as soon as the television turns on, it seems to dim the lights in the entire house. An eerie music fills the room as Steve raises the volume and tells us what we’re watching. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he says. “Maybe the girls are too young for this.” My mother seems to agree, but I beg to stay and watch the show for a little while at least. Even at eight years old I know what I’m interested in. My mother reluctantly agrees, but makes my sister leave the living room, after all, she’s only six. For the next hour the three of us are memorized by one of the first episodes of the newly premiered show, listening to the hip dialogue, laughing at all of the jokes, and jumping in our seats when the “bad guys” come on screen. Instantly I am hooked. Like most children who can remember everything about the first time they played with a certain toy, or most adults who can remember what they felt the first time they heard Led Zeppelin, I can remember exactly how I felt that first season of watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I felt oddly protected, not only from the strong blonde heroine of the show, but also by my mother and stepfather who were just as entranced with it as I was. We had formed a bond over Buffy, a ritual Tuesday night viewing of the show that was all I seemed to talk about in school. Even my friends called me “Buffy,” which must have seemed weird to my teachers. I was the nine year old who preferred vampires and demons to Barbie dolls and Pretty Pretty Princess. The first season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer began airing just after my ninth birthday in March of 1997, a full ten years ago. Based loosely on an early 90’s movie of the same name, “Buffy” was created by writer Joss Whedon when he decided he was sick of seeing the young blonde girl in horror movies constantly portrayed as the victim. He instead drew up the idea for a teenage girl named Buffy Summers who would be blonde, beautiful, smart, endearing, and oddly tough. Buffy was, as the title suggests, a vampire slayer, the “chosen one” who had the power to slay the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness. Try as she might to live a normal teenage life, such as join the cheerleading squad, attend her school prom, study, and date someone who didn’t turn out to be a vampire, normal just wasn’t in the cards for Buffy Summers. As the series progressed, so did my life. Just a few episodes into season two, my mother and stepfather got married, and we soon moved into a new house which would become the place where I watched “Buffy” for the next six years. Almost all of my memories of Tuesday nights with my stepfather and mother involve being in the family room on my couch, hypnotized for an hour by what was happening onscreen. In season four, Buffy and the gang embarked on College, and was starting Middle School. These occurrences were obviously not the same, but in my eleven year old brain I found this coincidence to be helpful and strengthening. After all, if Buffy could deal with changing schools and simultaneously battling vampires on a weekly basis, I could certainly handle the sixth grade. Sometimes the bullies, popular girls, and even teachers seemed like the forces of evil. Having Buffy in my mind at all times kept me stronger. I could do it all. Seasons five and six were especially dark, and did nothing to stop my mother’s claims that perhaps this show was to advanced for someone my age. Of course, she never won that argument, and I continued watching “Buffy”, only now I was too embarrassed to view it with my parents. I instead began watching the series alone, unless the episode was lighthearted or extremely important, in which case I would have to view with them and discuss all of the jokes and significant plot movements. During these years, when I was just beginning the leap from adolescence into pre-teens, and then finally being a teenager, Buffy was growing like I was. She was maturing, finding herself, going through dark and rough times, and I was finding myself too. Perhaps I didn’t have to fight an evil hell-god named Glory who would stop at nothing to find a key back to her home dimension, but my struggles seemed real and impossible at times too. I’m scared out of my mind right now, and he knows it. I’m sitting on my boyfriend’s bed watching TV and freaking out because I have to start college tomorrow. I gulp and sigh, I need comforting, fast. He doesn’t know what to say or do that’s going to calm me down, but suddenly a thought comes to him. Steve reaches for the DVD collection that I had brought over a month ago, one we hadn’t touched yet in between watching “Dazed and Confused” and “Forrest Gump.” He reaches for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” season four, and puts the first disc in. All of a sudden I feel better. I find myself talking to him about the series, telling him all about how it changed my life, how I grew up watching it, and explaining to him the synopsis of every season until the point the cant take anymore and insists we just sit back and watch. One week and several episodes later, he is hooked on the show and ends up buying me more seasons on DVD so we can continue viewing together. Coincidentally, I’ve started college, and I’m dealing with it fine. I guess it didn’t hurt that the first episode he picked to play that day was entitled “The Freshman” and dealt with Buffy’s pre-college jitters. When the final episode aired I had to watch it in my kitchen sitting between stacked boxes and my microwave. We had just moved into our new house, literally three days before, and it was the first day our cable was installed. Of course, I panicked all week at the thought of my TV not working during the series finale, thinking of alternate places I could watch the show at. I sat on a folding chair surrounded by a cluttered mess of moving material, directly in front of the television, transfixed as I waited for 8:00pm for what I knew would be the last time. I was watching the episode alone, something I rarely did, because my parents were busy setting up our house in all the other rooms. I also put out strict instructions that if anyone in the house interrupted me during this house, I wouldn’t speak to them ever again. By 9:00 I was a wreck, crying and clutching at the screen, wanting more. I felt betrayed, abandoned, and lost. I also felt slightly embarrassed for crying over a television show, but at that point I didn’t care. “Buffy” had trapped me since 1997, leading me into a fantasy world that was full of vampires, demons, and ass-kicking blondes equipped with witty banter and sarcasm. I looked around my kitchen, at a house which was strange and new, a house which I had never watched “Buffy” in before, so it seemed fitting that I would never sit down on a Tuesday at 8pm to watch it here again. I knew my life was changing and that I was on the brink of growing up, and that by this time next year, I would be sixteen and wouldn’t have time for silly television shows. For that night however, I was still fifteen, I was still innocent and naive, and losing “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was still the scariest thing the world had thrown at me. Looking back, I long for that night. Currently my grandmother is in the hospital, my mother has to go get tests done from the doctor, and my ex-boyfriend and I just got into a huge fight. I am a wreck. There are literally thousands of ways I could be dealing with my pain; most of them are unhealthy, some of them are illegal, and a few of them involve cookie dough ice cream. Instead, I sit here on my couch curled up under a blanket watching my favorite season of “Buffy.” For at least an hour I don’t have to remember why I’m sad, and I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do after the episode ends. Right now it’s just me and Buffy Summers, and I am as content as I was when it premiered ten years ago, as emotional as I was when it ended four years ago, and as nostalgic as I’ll always be.