Watching the Supernatural finale hours after almost dying is, well. Different.
I cannot stress this enough: MAJOR triggers for frank discussion of a recent suicide attempt (no, not because SPN ended). Steer clear if this might hit too close to home. I'm no longer at risk, this happened a while ago and is over, and my care manager is aware.
Right, and spoilers for the series finale.
I'm old enough to have been a fan of SPN since 2005. And considering the fact that childhood abuse had me suicidal at around age 12, probably earlier, it's safe to say that I have never watched the show without that constant battle going on in the background, unrelated.
When Dean said he was tired, that he was done, I got it. When Sam asked in that abandoned chapel what the upside was to him being alive, or when he confided in his brother in a hotel hallway that he had always felt unclean somehow, I could relate. There was more to the show than that, of course -- the love, the loyalty, the humor -- but the struggle was another point of connection.
As both the show and I grew long in the tooth, and my life circumstances were progressive getting worse (as they sometimes do when you carry untreated trauma), I used SPN and the fandom as a comfort. And increasingly, living to see how the Winchester story ends became one of those grappling hooks you latch on to when you look for reasons to keep going just a little longer.
Naturally, that didn't (and couldn't) arm me against the waves of acute, hope-obliterating, soul-sucking despair that can routinely crash on your head when you're dealing with poverty, chronic physical illness and disability -- and in a harsh country, too -- as well as being severely post traumatic and dissociative. Saving me was never the show's job, nor should it have been. I used it as much as I could, though.
The more I felt like I had to die, the more I tried. Dying hardly ever comes naturally, not even when you feel like there's no other way. Painfully isolated and increasingly bedridden, I watched convention panels and smiled so hard my face hurt. Other times I cried. And I made online friends, often through the fandom, who made life less empty. Who loved and laughed and cried with me from afar. It's hard to overstate the effect that can have when you're trapped in a body that's pretty much your cage, with a mind that's wounded and struggling.
I kept fighting. But I also kept finding myself, over and over again, faced with the reality that most people who are deeply traumatized, certainly those who are also severely dissociative, get to know early on: the world excels at letting many of us know that there's no place for us. Fighting hard to survive with about 10% of what I need to live, I sometimes find it hard not to listen to that toxic message that many survivors and disabled folks hear and feel coming at them over and over: you're too broken to justify the cost and effort of keeping you alive.
It's been an especially hard couple of years in that sense. And as the finale was months, then weeks, then days away, I kept telling myself to wait. Wait for that. Decide later. "Deciding later" is a survival technique I've been using for decades now whenever I get actively suicidal. It's not a bad one.
So that very last Thursday evening (or very late night, where I live) came around. And it so happens that I was at the very end of my rope. Again, for unrelated reasons to the show ending, obviously. And I couldn't go on.
The finale was hours away, and off I went on that same journey. Wait. Wait just long enough to see how it ends. It's been 15 years. You've survived so far, and that bit of closure, at least, is within reach. Just fucking wait to watch that last episode; see how they go before you do. Let that be the one last kind thing you do for yourself.
I kept telling myself that even as I numbly went through my final checklist.
I know it hurts so much. I know this damn body is tortured beyond what you can stand, I know we've been told it's about to get even worse. And hours more of this seem like an eternity. Watching anything seems impossible. I know the PTSD is intolerable, I know you can't sleep, you live in constant fear and rage and exhaustion; I know you're alone in this.
I know you live in a place that has made its peace with people like you dying of Covid, and finds it a small price to pay for refusing to wear masks. I know how that makes you feel, to be told that your life is worth that little because you're disabled. I know 9 months of what amounts to house arrest, while living alone, have made everything so much worse. I know you just want to go.
But wait to watch how it ends. And decide later. You can go later. You can.
And I almost made it. I mean, I'm obviously still here, so I eventually survived. But I tried not to. I couldn't wait.
Sometimes, when you get to the lowest low point, when you are in all-encompassing agony, when your circumstances leave no room for hope even though you desperately want to live -- and I do, I so want to live -- no show, no fandom, no unfinished story can keep you from taking that step over the edge. Many times it can, but there are places where nothing has any meaning. Thursday night became one of those. Watching the finale was a faded notion in the background of all that agony, and then it was nothing at all.
I only managed to write one goodbye letter. Hard to be as organized as you imagined you would be, hard not to leave unforgivable loose ends. I have no memory of what the letter said, and I can't look at it, not yet. It's tucked away now, just out of view.
And then I went about doing the only thing that I felt could be done.
I didn't get to go away. Both because I couldn't stand the torment of the only method I had handy, though I sure gave it my best efforts -- two more minutes would have sealed the deal -- and because I was fucking afraid to die. All the way through, until I gave up and stopped what I was doing.
Fear of dying when you're your own executioner is an odd thing. Your body wants out of this plan you've made for you both. It responds like you'd expect when someone's life in under threat. It makes you have to run to the bathroom over and over, it makes your heart hammer in your chest and your ears ring.
There was no crying. Not at that point. I don't think there was crying when I gave up and accepted that I was staying alive, either. But I can't remember.
I don't know what I did during the few hours after that. The physical consequences of what I did were gone within half an hour or so -- being so ill, I knew not to try something that would land me in the ER during COVID, should I not complete the plan. I'd also be on my own there, and most likely dissociated to such a degree that I wouldn't be able to move or speak. That's not something I ever wanted to experience again, and a fucking horrible starting point if I survived.
Anyway, I was okay physically soon enough, which is not how it usually goes. I just remember being fuzzy and distant and alone. There was no one to call, and I also thought about how it would feel to get a call like that. I considered a crisis hotline, but didn't have the energy to explain my messy, complicated circumstances. I probably just lay there.
A few hours later, I was present enough to watch the finale. Still don't know how. Dissociation has it occasional advantages, one of which is being disconnected from certain things when it's all too much. And so I watched the final episode in bed, with the aftermath of that suicide attempt still all around me.
I watched Dean die the way he did. I watched Sam die. I watched them both being given the pained, tearful reassurance that it was okay to go. Watched them being held, watched those two strong, kindhearted, emotional, loyal men crying as they breathed their last. Dean's death, especially, broke my heart. He so clearly did not want to die. Was afraid, more than ever before.
I did cry then. I sobbed. I could cry for them. Hell, I could cry for that dog, wandering with Sam through the empty halls of the bunker. I cried as that dog looked up, with all that trust and love, at the only human he had left. I cried for Sam, sitting drained and aching in the dark library. Saying "I know, me too" on the unmade bed in Dean's cold, empty room.
Before that, back in the barn, I watched Dean not want to go. Sam begging him not to go, then forcing himself to tell his older brother what he needed, what he begged to hear. That he wasn't abandoning the one person he had spent his life looking out for. That Sam would survive him going, now that he had to go.
I never saved the world, and there's nothing heroic about me. But so much of what went on around those characters' deaths echoed what I had felt hours earlier, what I still was feeling. It gave me a safe way to cry for that, too.
I will always be grateful to the show for that small mercy. And grateful to Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, whom I've never met and never will, and have given such phenomenal performances here that they reached through all that distance, to unknowingly touch an ache that I could not cry for. They'll never know that. I imagine there are so many people like me who feel the same gratefulness, too, for their own similar moments of human connection.
The show is over now, and I try not to be sad about that, and I'm sure I will be. It would be sadder if I didn't feel a loss. Meanwhile, life doesn't stall just because you tried to stop your own. It's around two weeks later now, bright and loud outside my window in a world that's not safe for me to go out in, and I am lying in bed in a half-lit room trying to manage my pain. I didn't die. I'm still here.
I can't pretend I'm glad that I am, but I also know that I'm not ready to go yet. I'm just not. I have no good reason for that; sometimes you're just too afraid to die. And so I can't see myself trying to go away again any time soon. My health might take care of that for me anyway, but otherwise, looks like I'm stuck on this ride.
I'm very grateful that I've had SPN and its people for so long through this battle, to give me and the rest of the fandom so much more than meets the eye. And I'm grateful for that last, good cry, too.
Well, not the last cry, for sure. There's always rewatch #475783.
