The Corey Project

She was beautiful, smart, funny, friendly, and kind. She was in theater. She loved Dr. Who and ugly sweaters. She was creative and artistic -- unique. Meeting Corey was like meeting her mother from thirty years ago.
It's funny how, when you try to measure time by a specific memory, it always seems as if you've gone through a wormhole and skipped a few decades. The years speed past us, leave us wondering where they'd all gone to in such a hurry.
It seems like one day Corey's mother and I reconnected on Facebook, and in the next moment Corey's Senior pictures were posted on her proud mother's wall.

And then Corey was gone.
Her passing rent a great, gaping hole in the fabric of our universe, the balance of our world. I like to think of her knocking around in some alternate universe with The Doctor, with lots of planets and people to save. A good mother's child is generally a good child, and I know no better source of compassion than to have a kind and understanding mother. So Corey, she will be very kind, and clever, and brighten the very souls of every living being she meets. But in this universe, there is still that empty hole, and what do we do with that?

Corey would want us to fill it.

And so I find myself with a whole awful lot of running to do.
Corey was seventeen when she died, as she will always be in my memory.
And in the heart and memories of her mother, Corey will always exist as the infant, the toddler, the elementary student, and the happy teenager. For her mother there was so much more to lose. As each memory, each anniversary, each holiday and every birthday without Corey multiplies in the two years since her death, I know another little piece of her mother's heart gets torn fresh. It's hard to know how to comfort someone when they have lost their only child. I heard or read somewhere that Rose Kennedy, upon asked about her sons' deaths, said something about how unnatural it is for a parent to outlive their children, and that's a level of pain I can not fully even comprehend.
I think of how much it hurt when my ex-husband got physical custody of my children because I had no home to take them to, how the pain was so bad that I scarcely got through it alive. But to lose them altogether?
I think back to the days after I had to give them up, to the unnatural quiet in the house, to the empty rooms and unused toys mocking me every time I walked past their doorways, and most of all just how pointless my life had become all of a sudden. It had revolved around them, and now it felt as if there was nothing. I remembered I cried. I screamed at the relentlessly cold universe.
But I still had my children to live for. And this is the thing not everyone understands about being a mother, being a parent: You are always a mother (or father), whether your children are with you or not. I hadn't lost them, and I was still their mother. They needed me to figure out a way to live, and to thrive, so that someday I could show them how. You will always carry your children with you, in your heart and in your head. They're in your face and they're in the sounds, sights, and smells that accompany every day of your life.
"Lucy loves that flavor of ice cream."
"I remember when I watched this with Stuart; He cracked up at that part."
"That sounds like Lucy's laugh."
"I haven't been on this street since that time Stuart fell and skinned his knee. He carried on so much you'd have thought he was going to die..."

It was Corey's Mom who started it, my cherished childhood friend. At Christmas she mailed me a card and a packet of smaller-sized business cards with encouraging messages on them, to hand out to random people I meet, especially anyone who worked a thankless job, seemed in any way sad, or simply because my heart wordlessly led me to them.

Because Corey's mother still has her daughter to live for, as she will always carry her with her, always see and feel and hear her with all of her senses, all of her memories, because their hearts and minds connected in a way that only a mother can know.  In this sense, Corey has not left us at all. How much the rest of us mothers take for granted! All the little things that could at any moment be subtracted and replaced by a huge hole.

One thing I learned being without my children was that there are a lot of these holes out there in this tired, cynical old world, more than any one person could ever fill. 

But as Corey's mother, my friend had to do what Corey would have done.

In August, she challenged her Facebook friends to come up with seventeen acts of kindness, one for each year of Corey's life. If enough of us did that, those little good deeds would add up to something like the number of things Corey might have done, or would have us to do.

I promised that I would meet that challenge, and set out to work at it. I don't need accolades for anything I came up with; I didn't do them for that. I'm writing because I promised Corey's Mom that I would share these things with her, and then later it seemed that as many people as possible ought to know, and to do at least one small kindness -- for Corey.

My first kindness with Corey in mind was for a man I met at work who had served our country in Saudi Arabia. He had done his duty and then returned to the states using a walker, which he has had to use ever since. He was one of the nicest men I have ever met, and I think Corey would have liked his quirky sense of humor his liberal-mindedness, and what a really good artist he was. 

While I stuck to coloring mandala coloring books between calls  at the center where we both worked, David created scenes and stories with pictures he drew from memory -- A place he'd once lived, a man he once knew, a soldier, a desert -- This sailboat, which he gave to me on my last day at work. While I had an expensive set of 72 watercolor pencils, David worked with three #2 pencils, a couple of highlighters, three colored pencils in primary colors, and a charcoal pencil. He often stopped at my desk and told me how much he envied me my fancy "art kit," so I decided to go out and buy him a set of his own. I was curious to see what he'd do if he had a wider range of colors and a better quality pencil. The plan was to leave the pencils at his desk on my last day at work, so that I could slip out without having to endure the embarrassment of a "Thank you." I don't know why they make me feel that way, but they do. I want to do something really nice, but I don't necessarily want to be complimented for it. Go ask Freud.

One day David got to work three hours late, looking harried and upset. 

"What happened to you?" I asked, feeling that vague but fearful empathy of not knowing more than the expression on someone's face.

"I had an appointment at the VA hospital this morning," said David grimly, "The appointment was at nine, but I just got back."

I checked the time on my monitor. Three-thirty.

David was about to elaborate, but it was time for an impromptu meeting that had been called. Everyone shuffled out for the conference room and settled in, a buzz in the air about how this was the time of year when the call center started laying people off. We were all there on time, but the person from Human Resources was late, so David continued his story: 

"I stood there in line for awhile, but then had to take a number and go sit in the waiting area. It was like they just forgot about me. Three hours later, when I went to ask the lady at the desk what the hold-up was because I had to get to work, she looked at me like I was trash and accused me of being some kind of a problem. She said, 'Maybe if you had any kind of patience people would actually want to help you. You need to go sit down.' And it was like someone was going to escort me out of there if I said another word."

"Wow," I said. "It's terrible how they can spend so much money to send soldiers out to die for this country, but then they can't come up with better services for people after they've come home."

"You're telling me," he said glumly.

"If it isn't too much to ask -- What did you have to go in for?"

"My eyes," he said, "I noticed some blurriness, and I thought that it was just that I needed a new prescription, but turns out I've got cataracts."

I didn't get a chance to do more than shake my head before the meeting started, and it turned out people were right -- Tomorrow was our last day.

David had been hoping he could stay on because it was the only job he knew of available to him.

I had already interviewed for another one and gotten it, so I was only sorry for his sake.

Corey didn't have to nudge me very hard.

The next day, when David came back from his break, I was on the phone with a customer, but I listened nervously for a reaction. 

There was a box of 150 colored pencils sitting on his desk.

I heard the box open, and the sound of him riffling his fingers through them all. He settled himself into his chair, paused, and then I heard the gentle rustle of paper as he unfolded his note. After a few minutes of silence, I heard him draw in a deep, sniffling breath, and then release it. 

It occurred to me that this had actually all been a terrible mistake, that the man still had four more hours of work to go, talking on the phone with one customer after another, fighting back tears.

I hung up my phone.

David tapped my shoulder, so I swiveled my chair around to face him. 

"Did you do this?" he asked solemnly.

Sensing some strong emotions, I was almost afraid to nod my head. David clutched the note to his heart and mouthed "THANK YOU!" through his tears.

And then all I could do in return is mouth the words, "You're welcome," because I felt as if I might start crying myself. 

"She was her only child?" he asked. 

I nodded again. I'd been worried about what I might do if he were too proud to accept the gift, so I'd written explaining that the pencils weren't from me, that they had nothing to do with me at all. 

The next day, he came in and told me "You made my wife cry with what you did."

As a general rule, I don't think it's a good thing to make someone else cry, but the way he said it expressed further gratitude and a desire to let me know what a profound thing had taken place here. In David's smile and the warmth of his voice, I felt something more than just a "little" act of kindness, and that as soon as they could do so, the couple would pass that kindness on to somebody else. David would be sure to explain that it was for Corey.

We tend to get caught up in the idea that doing something important for someone else requires a lot of time, work and money. It's overwhelming how big we think it has to be when we reach out toward another person. I didn't have time or money, and simply doing my job from day to day was exhausting, so I'd had to come up with something more manageable. But how many acts of kindness does it take to fully represent seventeen years of life? Some of the things I thought of were things I know I would have done anyway, just little things, but it was kind of nice to think of myself as having Corey for a partner in this venture. I would stop and consciously try to decide 'How can I brighten the day, or maybe just one important little moment of the life of the average Joe out on the street?" What would the creative, thoughtful young woman have chosen to do?

And so Corey...

1. Gave me a pat on the back for helping David and then pressed me to move on, to
2. send a special picture to another of my grieving friends,
3. Give a painting to another of my friends who was worried about losing her job,
4. had me tell my daughter Lucy all about her and the project she had me working on, and how I could use some help carrying out her work.
5. helped us come up with the idea of donating money to a dying child around Lucy's age who wanted to swim with the dolphins,
6. pressed us to help someone clean up a mess that wasn't actually any concern of our own,
7. told the man washing the windows at the restaurant that he was doing a beautiful job helping us to see the flowers, and he was so pleased and astonished that we were pretty sure no one had ever taken the time to tell him before,
8. which prompted us to stop and make contact with every janitor we came across, to really see them and tell them how much we appreciated their hard work,
9. had us read a story to a crying child in a waiting room until the little girl laughed instead,
10. found something special for me to post on the wall of each of my Facebook friends, one for every day of the month,
11. made certain that I stopped and stooped down to pick up litter wherever I walked outside that month,
12. helped me contrive something nice to do for my mom on her birthday by cajoling one of my rides to stop at Meijer for us to buy her a cake,
13. had us talk to people in waiting rooms about the lives of their families and their friends instead of staring down at my phone,
14. reminded me to slow down for the rest of the  summertime I had with Stuart and Lucy, and work extra hard to look them in the eyes, listen to what they had to say, and then find the right responses,
15. Gave my boyfriend a little shove to help an elderly woman get something off the top shelf at the store instead of standing there muttering to himself about her being in our way,
16. encouraged me to leave my phone downstairs, on mute or in silent mode, and instead of feeling badly about our time together not seeming long enough and not being ideal, focusing instead on the quality of the time that we had left.
17. and asked me to stop feeling badly about myself when the kids were away, stop focusing on the hole I felt inside myself, and instead to spend that time apart from my children filling in holes in the hearts of others.

I had set about trying to heal the world's hurts 

one person, 

one small act of kindness 

at a time.

And I discovered

 that there is no "small" act of kindness.

Corey taught me that.

Sad is Happy for Deep People

Fairly recently my brother asked me if I ever read a book that's cheerful.

I think he was a little concerned that reading "depressing" stories might not be the most helpful thing I could be doing when I know I've got PTSD and there might be a chance that something I read could trigger an episode. Well, the nice thing about reading is that you can always put the book down before things get out of control.

Besides, to quote a Doctor Who episode: "Sad is happy for deep people."

What brought the whole thing up was a discussion on what we were reading. He, of course, was reading up on French history for his doctorate degree, while I had been given a book by Liz Murray called Breaking Night which I found inspiring. He asked what it was about. I told him it was the biography of a girl who had once been homeless and how she had taken control of her life and went on to attend Harvard. Furthermore, she began a program to help impoverished, homeless teens to finish their schooling as she did, taking something terrible from her own life and using it as a personal force toward making something good of what she had learned. What most moved me about her story was her ability to express forgiveness and compassion for her imperfect (okay - horrible) parents. I constantly marvel at how two different people can come from virtually the same appalling background, but one turns out emotionally crippled and bitter while the other will be strong and compassionate. What makes that difference?

Yesterday I finished a book called Becoming Anna, by Anna J. Michener. I can't judge Anna for being less forgiving of her parents for the things that they did to her. For one thing, Anna's parents deliberately hurt her and had her wrongly placed in a mental institution, while Liz's parents were addicted to drugs and alcohol. And for another, Anna wrote the book while she was still very close to what had happened, while the emotions were still raw and the injustice still debilitating. I can understand that. I can understand what it is to go through something so difficult, through no fault of your own, and then later have to come to terms with what happened. Writing can help heal that a little. Even better, writing can be a catalyst toward change. This is the reason that Anna wrote the book.

Because Becoming Anna was the most recent book I read, I still have a lot of thoughts running through my mind that I need to express.

The first of these is a question that she asked early on in the book: "Can a person truly sympathize with what they have never known? Or are there simple two kinds of people in the world - those that are deeply scarred and those that are not - who can never understand each other and get along?" I think for the first question, I would point out that there is a difference between sympathy and empathy. People who feel sorry that I can't sleep at night because my body is irrationally frightened of something that happened years ago and isn't even happening anymore will listen and nod at what I have to say (hopefully without judging me), while a person who emphasizes can actually offer hep and advice based upon personal experience. As to her second question, I have two thoughts on that. One: It's really amazing how I will meet a certain person and we will instantly bond because we have the same sense of humor, the same compassion for people, the same difficulty identifying and keeping personal boundaries (immediately that person and I are like family) - And every time, I will later find out that this person I feel such kinship with was also abused or suffered some terrible loss as a child. It's uncanny. And two: It is difficult for people who haven't been through those things to understand, but I don't believe that it's impossible. I see that in my sister's marriage. She's happily married to the nicest man with the most normal childhood anyone could ask for, and yet he is empathetic and patient when she responds with unreasonable force to something that triggers undealt with issues from her childhood. Statistically, perhaps she "lucked out" on that one.

Another quote that stuck with me was "Self-abuse is shockingly common, especially among people who have been conditioned to believe that they are to blame when things go wrong." Well, lucky me, I'm not a cutter and I've never ended up in the mental hospital for trying to kill myself, but the statement still bothered me. I had been in counseling several different times over the years trying to understand how to handle my social anxiety, the panic attacks that came in and out of my life, and a list of vague, nameless issues that didn't come together to be diagnosed as PTSD until years later. In the course of speaking with different professionals, I was always confused at how they all seemed to think that I hated myself. I was told that I starved myself because I hated myself, that I ate too much because I hated myself - in general, that I would take better care of myself if I didn't hate myself so much. I never liked these conversations. I knew I had a low self-esteem, but I was not deliberately hurting myself in any of the ways they suggested. Could I really be so disassociated from my own thoughts and feelings that I was punishing myself and didn't even know it? Well, the answer to my own question here is "yes," but really I'm not asking the right question. The real question is, "What happened to me that I never learned how to care about myself and to take care of myself?" I mean, I am really terrible at it. The latest counselor keeps talking about how I need to learn to soothe myself when I’m experiencing anxiety, or when I can’t sleep. She even went so far as to say that I need to have something soft to rub against my skin when I’m feeling especially disconnected. I looked at her and I believed what she was saying but still felt a cynical sort of skeptism about the idea. After all, I’m a grown woman and there’s something almost humiliating about being told that I can’t do for myself the first most basic thing that doctors and nurses will tell you that a baby needs to learn: how to self-soothe.  How to tell myself that everything is all right and I’m going to be all right and I don’t have to be so afraid that I find myself looking at myself from far away, outside my body, trying mentally  to find someplace that’s safe because I can’t seem to do it emotionally. Do I hurt myself because I secretly hate myself that much? I don’t know. What I do know is that I hold myself to very high standards, and it is devastating when I can’t reach them. I know that I always blame myself when this happens, no matter what extenuating circumstances there are. And I know that this is partly because I feel that I am falling short of what others expect of me, too.

Anna talks a lot about the cycle of violence and abuse. She has two main reasons for telling her story. One is to protest an “enlightened” society wherein children still get abused and other people see and still to this day just turn their heads away. The other is to expose the malpractices of the public mental health system upon children. As a child, Anna was not listened to. Her parents had her convicted to that mental hospital based upon only their word as parents. It was her word against theirs, and as a child she was not given the right to defend herself. I remember a kindly Sunday school teacher who laughed and made a joke of it when he reached across a table to get something and I winced like I thought he was going to hit me. I remember a nice old school teacher who taught typing placing a donut on my keyboard in the middle of a typing test when he saw me struggling not to cry after a sleepless night. I remember, with utter scorn and still a little anger, the doctor who popped the vertebrae of my spine back after I’d been hit, who joked with my mother about “mouthy teenagers these days.”  And I will never forget the one teacher who read a story of mine while the classroom worked, with tears in his eyes, who actually tried to get me out of that house. The sad thing about this last memory is that it illustrates another of Anna’s points about those children: Because so few people do anything about what they know, children are fooled into questioning whether or not it really is abuse. My parents didn’t prevent that teacher from taking me anywhere. At the time, I said that I was fine and that I didn’t want to leave my little sisters alone there. “And I (Anna) thought how fortunate I was merely to be imprisoned by other people instead of by myself.”

Anna talks about suicide. You combine abuse and indifference with self-hatred and fear, and you have a good chance of coming up with suicide as a way out. The thing is, “Most people who think of or attempt suicide don’t really want to die. They just want some help living, because that gets really damn hard at times.”  Studies show that “having PTSD correlates to having a higher chance of committing suicide; over “50 percent of all trauma survivors worldwide will attempt suicide in their lifetimes.” The National Institute of Health estimates that people suffering from PTSD are six times more likely to commit suicide. Among the military population, suicide has reached alarming levels. American veterans now account for one in every five suicides.” (Tanya Somanader and Zaid Jilani) I’ve never ended up in a mental hospital for attempting suicide, but last year before I found out what was happening to me, I hadn’t slept in over a month and was starting to dig through my medicine cabinet for all the discarded medications doctors had prescribed without knowing what was really wrong - with the intention of taking them all. In the light of day, I saw that this was some serious crazy talking here – it is not at all like me to want to die. I was just too miserably exhausted to think straight anymore. But I was fortunate in that I was self-aware enough to seek help when things reached that point. I didn’t want to die. I just needed help figuring out how to live.

I’d lived for a long time blaming myself for things that I had no control over – trying to control them anyway. As a child, I thought that if only I could be good enough, my father would have no reason to be angry with me. So I did the housework and I got good grades and I stayed out of all the trouble common to rebellious teenagers. (Probably the most rebellious thing I ever did – the worst thing I could think of, in fact – was checking myself into counseling when I was seventeen.) After I had gone and married someone just as abusive as my father was, I was still trying to be the good girl, the perfect wife and mother. I can’t begin to express the outrage I felt when we were in divorce court and my ex-husband tried to say that I was crazy and an unfit parent. In her book, Anna says “I knew the feeling well, the horror that comes when you have spent years molding yourself into exactly everything someone else says you should be, and you still don’t get on the ‘sane’ list. Not only is everyone as apathetic as they were before, you have lost yourself as well.” And I did. For a very long time, I literally didn’t recognize myself. The girl I was at school – that wasn’t me. The woman I was at church – that wasn’t me. It reminds me of something Amy Tan wrote: “I didn’t lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on a stone are worn down by water.”

When I started reconstructing myself after the divorce, I had to dig deep for the simplest things: What kind of music do I really like? What movies do I want to watch? How will I spend my time? Where would I like to live? How will I make money? Following these questions were the deeper ones: Who am I separate from my children? Where do they end and I begin? What do I really believe about the nature of God and the practice of religion? What would make me happy? What do I want out of my life? How can I learn to take care of myself without feeling guilty or selfish? Years of being told what to do and what to think and what to like, of being told that I was stupid, lazy and selfish had deteriorated all sense of self. I placed a vote of no confidence in myself, and I sometimes think that this showed in divorce court. My ex-husband said that I was crazy and unfit – and I cried but didn’t stand up enough for myself because at the time I was actually afraid that he might be right. Anna says at the end of one of her chapters: “Whoever says ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ never had it written about them that they were insane.” I am aware that, to this day, my ex-husband tells people that I left him because I “went crazy.” Why else would I have given up such a perfect life with such a great husband? Always worried about how he will look to the outside, he is. Insidiously secretive on the inside, in places where people can’t see unless they’re right up close on a daily basis. It was emotional abuse – there are no bruises or police records to vindicate me. Words are damaging. They have as much power to destroy as they do to inspire.  Well, I was pressed but not crushed.

I used to really criticize the girls at school who would read one after another of those teen-angst girly books – the ones obviously geared to preach or educate about teen-angst girly issues such as anorexia, teen pregnancy, or abusive boyfriends. Part of my objection was pure intellectual snobbery – those books were hardly great classics of literature. And part of it was because I personally did not want to think about those things. Most of them I felt I couldn’t relate to. I was too busy trying to be the perfect daughter, student, and person in general. I didn’t have anorexia, I didn’t have sex, and I didn’t date until I was a Junior in high school. I suppose I thought I was too good for those books. I preferred escaping harsh realities by reading fantasy novels or sloughing through a volume of Shakespeare. It never occurred to me at the time that the only reason I couldn’t relate to those girls was because I had so far removed myself from my own suffering that I wasn’t even experiencing the good things about being a teenage girl. One counselor said that I was like a little girl playing up in a tree house, occasionally peering down at the world below. That statement bothered me for years – probably because it was true.

So why don’t I read happier books? Possibly because I’m doing what the girls I once judged were trying to do – gain a deeper understanding of things that have happened to me or to other people that I have known. Better yet, to follow people who have gone before me so that I can find my way out of the forest.  When I read Breaking Night, it inspired me and it encouraged me to do some things that I’d felt too small and broken to accomplish. I’ve never been committed to a mental hospital (as of yet), but reading Anna Mitchener’s book made me think a little more compassionately of girls I have known who acted out their anger instead of holding it all inside. I’ve already explained the things the book got me thinking about myself. Books are mirrors and travel guides and entertainment and pastimes. They show us ourselves and others. They show us where we want to go and where we have been. They make us laugh, think, cry, and even get angry at times. I read a lot of happy books. I love children’s literature and picture books. I enjoy biographies and poetry, autobiographies and novels. I read many things for many different reasons. Ultimately this is because I am many different people and have many different purposes myself. I'm not reading sad books because I like being sad. I do it because making all these connections makes me happy.

Just Two Words...

Ten Minutes

In ten minute's time my outer life ends.
My body will turn to repetitive, meaningless tasks while my mind roams abroad in search of a star.
Perhaps I will go back to Scotland, Ireland, or Japan - visit Paris or London...
When midnight strikes my voyage will not end with a pumpkin.
I will ride upon magical wheels to live in victorious abandon and blind hope.
The world is so beautiful in pieces.
It breaks apart into shards of images - the stars shining outside the sweep of my windshield until the garbaged-bagged window obscures them - the smile of a man with a dimple in his cheek - a girl with Audrey Hepburn's eyes - The rainbow glow of factory lights against the clouds...

Today I can't help but think of Halloween.
I work until midnight.
I long to find someplace afterward in a little pub or a huge ballroom where I can wear my hair up and dress in a Louis the 16th Ballgown.
I think it's those damnable Disney movies that I watched as a child.
Don't get me wrong - there are a lot of good things tucked away in some of those movies, but there's also the prevalent thought that to dress up and be a Princess is some sort of desirable state.
Or perhaps it's more that I sometimes feel I belong to a different age, one where having the qualities of Jane Eyre or a Jane Austin might be more desirable than not.
Then again, it is most likely that I know damn well that I'd look stunning in that dress.
And there haven't been enough balls in my life.

Next year I'll as likely become a zombie or an enchantress.
This year I might just walk the streets and admire any stragglers in costume as I wend my way homeward.

Hello again.
I am Heather.
I am a sometimes-Whovian.

"Hello Heather!"

I have not watched a Doctor Who episode in six months.

"Good job! Keep up the good work! Fight the good fight!"

Having dropped my Master's Thesis for the time being, I am considering substitute teaching again while awaiting the results of my interview. Meantime, the mindless drudgery of factory work leaves me free time to write and read and see whatever culture i can get my hands on.

I consider it a win-win situtation, except when I look at the time on the lower right of the computer screen and realize that I have to go and get ready for the above-mentioned mindless drudgery of factory work now.

Perhaps I will post more often.

An Unearthly Child

We, my friends, are about to go on a journey through time and space, beginning with the very first episode of Doctor Who, which aired back in 1964. Why? you may ask. I'll tell you why: Because you can't be a proper Doctor Who fan if you have never watched Classic Doctor Who. So I am going to start watching all the episodes there are, which I suspect shall take inordinataely absorbant swaths of time, considering how many years behind I am. This first episode I actually watched in September of 2009, but fortunately I have an excerpt of my origonal impressions:

"As I understand it, this episode was released late because of the death of President John F. Kennedy. It is more of a drama, with lots of eery black and white magic. The first Doctor is suspicious, cantankerous, and rather mean to the first humans we ever see him run across, primarily because they get really nosy about him and his granddaughter, Susan, whom they suspect is abused because he parked the TARDIS in a junkyard and they basically live there in it. So far I've only watched about half of it, but I'll work on it again tomorrow night..."

I have to assume that if you're reading this blog you already know what the TARDIS is - if not, you can always google it. But chances are I'll ramble about it at some point anyway, so no worries if you're patient.

I am not too favorably impressed with Susan, who is your typical overgrown adult posing as a teenager included in there for the sake of the teenybopper crowd.

Her schoolteachers happen upon the TARDIS out of concern for her, and end up on a spectacular journey through time and space of their own - this is where the adventure begins, and that is what makes the episode so important.

Confessions of a Doctor Who Fangirl

I don't know what the hell happened to me really. One day I was a thirty-something divorcee trying not to make any stupid, typical Divorced Errors. I was struggling with low self-esteem and negative thinking, and then - I don't know what hit me - I was watching T.V. with some new friends of mine - huge SciFi fans - and they happened to be watching a Doctor Who episode called Journey's End.

Now, let me be clear: I loved Star Wars as a kid, possibly because I had an older brother, but also because I thought Yoda was awfully cute and wanted to marry him when I grew up. (Yes, I was a strange child) Felt the same way for E.T. However, I was never really a serious SciFi fan.

Then came The Doctor, and my life altered significantly.

I came into the episode right as Donna was realising that there couldn't be a Human/TimeLord Metacrisis and The Doctor was forced to erase her memories.

I was confused.

Who was this Doctor?

Who was Donna? Why would entire planets sing songs about her?

What was a TARDIS?

Mark, old SciFi pro that he is, explained to me a little.

"Doctor Who has been on T.V. in Britian since the nineteen-sixties," he said, trying to be helpful, "The main character, The Doctor, regenerates into a new body every few years, but he's always the same guy. He's like 900-something years old."

"You remember Doctor Who, don't you?" Sheila asked me, "From like the Seventies? The guy with the crazy hair and the long scarf?"

"Maybe..." I said slowly, thinking really not, but not willing to give up on the idea that I should know, somehow. 1963, after all - that's a long time.

I watched the end of the show, The Doctor standing in the rain, his friends all gone and only one old man to remember him, and oddly enough I could relate. I'd lost everything in the divorce - home and friends and even some family - and now I was sort of on my own, fumbling around trying to figure myself out and get some joy out of life.

I didn't see The Good Doctor again for a few weeks. Next time I was at Mark and Sheila's house, Planet of the Dead was playing. Now it seems to me that, based on the buzz online, some people didn't care for that episode because it was lighthearted and didn't take itself too seriously, but in my case I ended up hooked on a T.V. show for the first time since The West Wing went off the air. I was intrigued when Lady Christina asked who The Doctor was and he didn't quite tell her. I was amused that all the military people from UNIT were so respectful and honored to speak with him, while he brushed off the attention and at the same time declared himself modestly to be brilliant.

There was some sort of Marathon running, so that I saw Human Nature, Family of Blood, Utopia, The Sound of Drums, and Last of the Timelords all in one fell swoop. And I couldn't tear my eyes off it. I pitied and understood the unrequited love of Martha Jones. I was so relieved when The Doctor replaced John Smith just in the nick of time to save the world that you'd think he'd been my long lost friend by that time. I got the whole thing with The Master and The FobWatch and the drumbeats, and I was heartbroken right along with The Doctor when his nemesis refused to regenerate rather than spend all eternity with him. I found myself thinking, "I'd spend all eternity with you, Doctor!"

I felt ridiculous, but there was no going back.

I went home and looked Doctor Who up online. I had decided that if I was going to be a fan, I might as well go all-out. In particular I didn't want to be just a David Tennant fangirl. The only thing for it was to know and see all the other Doctors. My favorite site was entitled A Brief History of Time (Travel), a brilliantly organized page clearly produced by a dedicated fan of the show that outlined the entire history the show, episode by episode, Doctor by Doctor. I read the entire thing, finding that there had been ten Doctors so far altogether, with another rumored to be on the way. I wanted to watch every single existing episode in circulation.

In the end I suppose it was the ultimate escape from a grim reality. I found myself looking around for the TARDIS - not really expecting it to materialise for real, just liking the idea. So far as the New Series Companions go, I think Rose was really sweet, and Martha a real firecracker, but it's Donna Noble I understand the best. The idea of not drifting, but waiting. Waiting for a chance to get out there and really meet my full potential, to see the world and make a difference somehow - all the time not certain if I'm good enough, or special enough, and wondering if I should just settle down with someone and make do.

What I see in Doctor Who is the call to live life to its fullest, strive to meet your full potential, do what's right even if no one else can or will, and for heaven's sake have a good time while you're at it. Most of all, it was a very positive show to watch at the most depressing time of my life. It lifted my spirits and made me think life just might be worth exploring further. If The Doctor did exist, I know he'd tell me that I'm brilliant.