you might just make it after all

in between discovering how much i love black books and watching a variety of sci-fi and horror flicks, lately i'm on another huge mary tyler moore show kick.

when i was going through my nervous breakdown last year, i watched a lot of mary tyler moore. mainly i laid in bed watching it and weeping, or listened to it while in the shower, also weeping. it was not the best time for me. watching mary and how well her life was going was cheerful and depressing for me at the same time. i was jealous of her having rhoda, i liked her little apartment, i envied her work situation. i thought about how our stories were similar in that we were both single women starting over in a new place, but she seemed so much better prepared for it, and also a hell of a lot cuter than me. i know, i know, it's tv and comparing myself to a sitcom is kind of sad, but it's all i could think about. mary could do it, why couldn't i? how did she get up everyday and put on something cute and kicky and go about her life without instantly bursting into tears the second she was alone? at this point i cried about 12 hours of every day; in the car, in my room, in the shower, in the bathroom at work. when i wasn't crying i was puking, and when i wasn't doing either i was tossing and turning in bed. mary was the one thing i could watch, and after the initial crying at the part of the theme song where he tells her "you might just make it after all" i could normally watch the rest without crying. those twenty minute spurts of watching her life instead of thinking about my own were nice. it didn't always work, but it worked more than anything else.

i went back on medication and got my shit together, and couldn't bear to watch mary anymore. it made me remember how awful i felt, it made me nervous and skin-crawly, i still couldn't watch without feeling like i'd failed. something made me pull it out the other day and watching it again made me happy for the first time since i was little and watched re-runs with my mom. it's nice to watch her succeed, i like rhoda, and her tiny apartment is still crazy cute to me. i feel a little sad sometimes watching it and thinking about all the time spent miserable before i got some help, but there are some things you never realize until after it's over. only in hindsight can i see how unhappy i was, how i didn't have to feel that way for so long, how mary tyler moore and colorado were parts of it but not all of it. thinking about how my brain works and how it doesn't is still uneasy for me, but i'm coming to terms with it. one episode at a time.