And just like that, the Heartstopper web comic is complete, and I am left to contemplate my thoughts and feelings on the final page of the only piece of media I have ever loved.
The impact Heartstopper had on me was profound. It breathed life back into me after becoming disabled during my undergraduate degree, and provided me solace as I transitioned into a master’s of mental health counseling program to become a therapist.
Heartstopper meant the world to me as an autistic, bisexual, and genderqueer person who was struggling with chronic illness, complex PTSD, and graduate school. I mean no joke when I say that I will remember the day I discovered Heartstopper forever. That day, I had half-heartedly opened my computer to burn time on Netflix while home for the summer, and was scrolling through queer shows. I had been in a phase of watching all of the popular queer media that I had missed while hiding in the closet. I didn’t recognize it, but I gave it a shot anyway. I binge watched the entire first season in one sitting, and sat shocked, not yet realizing how much the show would come to heal me.
It became my first true autistic special interest in years. I watched and read the comics repeatedly, cyclically, taking in as much new content as I could find. It became a safe place for me, and I returned when distressed, bored, or lonely, and watched it with every new friend I made in my first year of graduate school. I watched the first season over 20 times, and friends would ask me which rewatch I was in regularly.
When Charlie was diagnosed with anorexia and OCD, I gasped, and I cried, because for the first time, I felt real compassion for my teen self who struggled with the same illnesses. Heartstopper became a tool for facilitating my self-forgiveness, and a resource for managing the worst of my PTSD distress.
Often, friends and classmates would ask me which character I most identified with, and would share who they aligned with most. I spent time thinking and journaling about this topic, and after the release of the third season, it clicked: in many ways, I am both Nick and Charlie, past and present, futures tied together through fate. I shared this with another grad school therapist friend, and she replied, “So watching them fall in love must feel like learning to love yourself. All of you.”
Heartstopper was more than just a product for entertainment. And arguably, it was the key to processing much of my trauma. Heartstopper provided me access to the sweet joy of queer adolescents getting to experience love and community - something I never had. I was able to grieve what I had lost and to commit to create that reality for others.
For years, I had felt bitter about the wasted youth that I had endured being trapped in the closet, and the loss of my physical abilities to chronic illness once I had finally come out. Hours of my day were spent daydreaming about them, as it was a preferable alternative to ruminating and remembering the awful scenes and flashbacks from my past. I even pulled the comics out to read them from my phone amidst a PTSD episode triggered during class in graduate school as a part of a safety plan put together by my therapist and I.
And now that Heartstopper has come to a close, I have realized that now I spend hardly any of my week thinking about them. They are on my walls and bookshelves and laptop and water bottle, and Alice’s signature lives on in a copy of volume five on my bookshelf, and in a framed print on my bedside table. The lessons they taught me live on in my heart, but I no longer rely on them solely for comfort anymore. Symbolically, like Nick and Charlie, I finally have a nice set of memories to reminisce about instead of escaping to a fictional universe with them. Also, like Nick and Charlie, I have a loving group of friends who have shown me endless love and support through thick and thin. I have fallen in love with myself and with my community, and like Nick and Charlie, I have utilized this self-love to lead by example, and to guide my clients, friends, and family towards a greater sense of hope and harmony with themselves and each other.
Nick and Charlie not only exist forever in Alice’s heart, “hand in hand on a beach somewhere”, but also in my therapy office, cheering on my clients with a “stand tall show them all” print from Charlie’s bedside table, and in my words as I try to impart all of the wisdom they have brought me.
Thank you for sharing them with us, Alice. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart <3
