An Era, Ended

For the last several months, I've been re-watching Buffy. Almost primarily. From Episode 1 of Season 1 to Episode 22 of Season 7. I'm just about to start episode 22 of Season 7 right this minute, and I felt like I needed to write something to commemorate this occasion.

This was part of my Day Zero Project. I've owned Buffy (thanks, Tim & Nicole, again, for turning me on to this show, seriously...) for five years, now, and never watched the whole series back-to-back. This has been a really incredible experience. Since I didn't watch it while it was on TV, I didn't get a chance to go through it the way you would sort of live with a show while it's on. Like life.

As I'm getting ready to say goodbye to Buffy, Xander, Willow, Anya, Giles, Dawn, and all the (thank God, seriously) Potentials, I am confronted with one of life's sad truisms.

Life changes.

You start off a kid. You don't know a lot. You're pretty naive. You make mistakes, you hurt. But you make friends, and they love you. You make promises. You fall in love.

Then life changes.

You become a young adult. The mistakes you made before come back to bite you in the butt. Some of your friends desert you. Some of them try to kill you. (Okay, so that's a little extreme.) Things are not as easy as they once were. You are on your own. Your first love was not "the one". You are wounded. You want to hide in a hole somewhere. You realize that the world is not what you expected it would be.

Then life changes.

You become an adult. The mistakes you made before don't seem so bad anymore compared with the ones you're making now. You have responsibilities. Some of your friends desert you, or desert each other, or both. Your first love seems like a picnic compared to who you're dating now. You want to be a kid again, but you also like your wisdom and strength. You have new perspectives on life.

And life changes...