TV makes me sad
I’m a little late, but I just watched the final season of Stranger Things.
And now I am Sad.
I’m not a super fan or anything - I’ve seen each season exactly once, usually right when they come out, so I hadn’t seen any ST in a couple of years. I had to read a recap of the last season and still barely remembered anything. But I had two long travel days coming up and did not want to rely on whatever entertainment Southwest Airlines had available, so I re-activated Netflix and downloaded season 5.
I made it through all but the last episode (2 hours long!) on my flights. I saved the finale so I could watch it uninterrupted (and also on a bigger screen besides my tiny little phone).
I cried for what, the last 60 minutes? Once it was over, I felt this familiar, hollow feeling. Oh dear. I am Very Sad again.
This has happened to me before (the majority of this blog is a blog I wrote over a year ago but never published because it felt too precious, but I am going to be brave and share it now). I know now that many people get Very Sad after TV shows, movies, books, whatever, end, because we are human and that’s great. I still don’t know exactly why I am so Sad, although I have theories. I don’t know that I need a theory, or even to understand, but when my heart hurts like this, it feels like my sole focus is to understand why so I can help myself feel better.
I also, unfortunately, know that nothing will make me feel better but time.
Regardless of why I’m grieving the end of this show: the loss of watching a group of friends grow up over time, or the optimism and triumph over evil, or because here is yet another thing that has been present in my life for 10 years (although, tbh, a small presence) and is now gone, there’s nothing I can do to inject these things into my life and make myself feel better. And that’s ok. I’m grateful for my friends, even though we don’t live next door to each other and hang out every day and experience every single thing together. I don’t really have an evil in my life that needs triumph over. (Phew!) And things will always come and go, and having the experience in the first place is meaningful enough.
So. I’ll be sad for a minute. But I will be ok. Hopefully the next time I decide to watch TV I won’t be so emotionally devastated.
I wrote the following blog in early 2025.
I recently rewatched the Harry Potter movies. All of them! Delta Air Lines had the first six Harry Potter movies available on their in-flight entertainment system, which I made use of over three trips I took earlier this year, leaving me to rent the final two. I finished Part II of the Deathly Hallows yesterday.
I am destroyed.
I finished the last movie around 5 p.m., sniffling through the whole thing. I complained about the storyline choices during dinner (what even was the point of including the Tonks + Remus story if it’s just going to be dissolved into two throwaway lines?) to my husband.
And then, around 9 p.m., I started sobbing.
It’s over. (Again. I have definitely seen the movies a handful of times and read the books even more.) I don’t know why I started crying. I just know that as soon as the last scene ended and I bore witness to the terrible CGI epilogue, I was Sad. Very Sad.
I was in elementary school when the Harry Potter books were published. The cultural movement around them was enormous; I can’t think of any other books I purchased at midnight in a physical book store. Not only was I the lucky, “right” age for Harry Potter, I loved reading, and I loved the escape of this incredible magical world. I stayed up all night reading the books as they came out. The one time I didn’t, HPatHBP was spoiled for me on the internet (“Snape kills Dumbledore on page 596!”).
When I turned 11, I waited for my owl to come welcome me into the Wizarding World. When that didn’t happen, I kept waiting. Maybe there had been a mistake.
Surely I would belong in such a special place.
Right?
I saw all the movies in the theater with my dad. We got there early to get in line for the best seats. He read the books alongside me.
I had Harry Potter shirts, Harry Potter folders and notebooks. Harry Potter decorations. I was Hermione one Halloween.
Much like many Millennials, Harry Potter was so formative in my early years. The last movie came out in 2011, when I was 20 years old.
And that was that. There was no more Harry Potter afterwards. I had adult stuff going on, at least. I got my first job. I went through my first breakup. I lived alone and went to grad school and re-read the HP series every 18 months or so.
Then my dad died.
I don’t think I’ve read the books since he died, nine years ago.
I’ve always felt in my heart how special they are, and were, to me. Watching the movies this year feels like a re-opening of very old healed scars. And it makes me sad.
The kindest thing I can do for myself is to just let myself be sad. Sure, I’m curious as to why exactly I am so fucking sad – because Harry Potter reminds me of my dad and now both are gone forever? Or because I used to be so full of childlike wonder and hopefulness and now that is also… gone..? Or maybe I know that there will probably never be anything as special as The Boy Who Lived in my life again?
Maybe all of these are true. Maybe all of these things together make a perfect storm of Sadness. It won’t last forever. I’m almost glad to feel so terrible - to be reminded that I was, am, so affected by something must mean it is very special to me. It’s okay to miss my dad. I miss him a lot, some days more than others. I miss him more on days I watch Harry Potter, apparently. Of course I’m going to be sad about that. I miss my childhood. Maybe not for the actual being-a-child part (which was also sometimes Sad), but for the parts that I’ll never get back. I’ll never wait in line at midnight at Borders for the next Harry Potter book. I’ll never be 13, praying I get late admission to Hogwarts.
I’m happy that I’m here, in my life as-is at this moment. I know Hogwarts isn’t real and that all this sounds kind of dramatic. But today, I’m sad. And I will be sad until it passes.
