Wide-Eyed Wonder

MINOR TORCHWOOD SPOILERS

I'm in a really rough period. All sorts of stuff I don't want to burden anybody with (and prolly can't be entirely honest about because my unfortunate motto is, "I don't get mad, I get hurt," so I'd prolly end up saying something I regret). But I know it has me  kind  of on edge. I was crying off and on all morning.

So I thought, okay, I'll watch some more Torchwood, having started it for serious (as in with the intent of finishing it) for the first time recently. And this episode, "Random Shoes" makes me  cry so hard at the end, I can barely  breathe because the dead guy, Eugene Jones (a name I think they could have done better with- dude's an uber-nerd, and they picked one of the archetypal names for him, "Eugene"- screams broken glasses and crooked teeth) spends the whole episode (which begins with his spirit looking  on at the car accident  that took his life) retracing his last couple weeks to remember that he died running away from his two best mates that were beating  him up over an "alien eye" they wanted to steal from him and sell, his estranged father was an even bigger loser than he thought, his little brother basically hated him, the woman he was in love with barely realized he existed, and his death pretty much destroyed his mother. I started sobbing during the funeral scene when  he makes a joke (he sort of narrates the episode) about how few people went to his funeral. And I really lost it during  a voiceover thing at the end of him saying you should enjoy life because it's so "amazing" but it ends really fast. But there's absolutely nothing for him to enjoy or be happy about in his life, and it just felt entirely contrived and pointless for me, like the writers shoe-horned it in because they realized how gorram depressing the whole episode is. 

And I think it just got me so worked up because I felt like, My God, this dude had such a terrible end,  and it was all just so unfair- he was selfless, smart, funny, and sweet, but people just constantly let him down and hurt him. And the writers made him out as some naive moron for still believing in something, the alien that supposedly would want their eye back. They tease you for a second when he goes solid long enough in the last minutes of the episode to stop someone from getting hit by a car- and everyone that was at his funeral (all ten) sees him, including his poor, emotionally destroyed mother. And then he gets sucked up into that stupid white shining light and is gone. It's just terribly unfair. 

Generic name, generic white light-
all-around depressing.

And I find  that extremely sad because notice it's nobody here on Earth he believed in or trusted. He had to indulge in the notion that an alien would want to meet him someday in order to keep going. Why?

Because people suck. That's why.

People let you down. They hurt you. They betray your trust. They break your heart. Abandon you. Lie to you. Suck you dry and give nothing  back (or if they do give anything, it's not remotely the same- like you give your kidney, they give you five bucks of Monopoly money). 

I wish I could have wide-eyed wonder like Eugene's for something, but I don't. Not anymore. I just can't.

This whole people-let-you-down thing is precisely why I have my weird unitarian/deist/whatever imaginary friend I've talked about before. I use it as a crutch because people are the reason for my worst pain, and people are thus precisely not going to help me. Do I even believe in it enough to blame it for my troubles? No. I blame people. So does it really provide me any comfort? No. And yet this pseudo-faith of mine is one of the reasons I'm hurting right now. Not because I know it's a crutch or whatever, but it's being used against me by... wait for it... another person.

Go figure? Yeah. Irony. If my life really was a scripted dramedy, it'd be dramatic irony, because my character prolly wouldn't have actually made the connection. As it's real life and I'm entirely aware, I imagine it's more situational. Such as this:

Besides, reality is quite often better than fiction. And what funner stories to tell my children and grandchildren than about the time I started having chest pains over a cheesy British sci-fi show?

Sigh. 

I'd love to believe in something, have  a dream. I used to. I had dreams, big dreams, but life and people have given me every reason to give up on them. So I can't have wide-eyed wonder. I'm too jaded.

Right now.

Because I know myself. Once the storms have settled and I've cried enough, I'll be... okay. I don't remember the last time I felt whole (well, I do, but once reality set in, I knew it was a farce, and then just hated myself even more for thinking it was real), but I can feel happy. I think more people are like that than are willing to admit- we need to be sad before we can be happy. I haven't had much time to process what's been going on in my life, and I guess today was a day for that. And I'll prolly need more days like this before I feel ready to dream again, and then perhaps a few more before I try to make whatever my new dream is into something real.

So I guess now I sound kind of like Eugene. But a big difference between the two of us  is that he never lost his wide-eyed wonder, and mine keeps coming and going. I'd say like  the tide, because that sounds pretty, but it's more like a yo-yo. Because I'm terrible at yo-yo-ing. The thing leaves my hand far too roughly, and I have a hard time getting it all the way back to my hand more often than not. In fact, it usually takes a long process of winding the string back around the thing in order for it to be in my hand again. 

But it'll get better.

Wait! I got it! I'll believe in Harvey Dent!!!!

But seriously, folks. Dawn will come. I believe in that, I guess. That I'll feel better, sooner or later. I just need my crying moments and a chance to lick my wounds. 

What sucks  is that I usually don't go seeking out the dreams. They sneak up on me gradually, and I've frequently exhausted myself trying to resist them. And then I give in. And then I try to make them real. And then I get hurt.

So either I'm doing something wrong, there's something wrong with  me, or I just can't seem to meet people that won't end up killing my dreams when said people are directly involved.

Ugh, okay, so I've done  enough babbling/emotional vomitting.  Here's a dancing puppy.