Comfort is found in various things, like maybe a person or an item. Mine is different. I find comfort in things that aren’t even real. I find comfort in TV series. Not just any series, the specific one I found when I was 13 years old, called The Vampire Diaries (TVD). It may sound silly to some people, but to me, it means so much. It was the first show I truly loved and repeatedly watched. All eight seasons had me wanting more, and the ending of it will always leave me numb.
I found The Vampire Diaries when I was in eighth grade, which was a year I went through a lot. I lost friends, I lost a lot of motivation, and I also lost myself. TVD was the one thing that I knew would be there for me at the end of the day. Even though it’s a show, it is the characters that bring me comfort. I can relate to them, and on my worst days I watch this show, and it makes everything go away for a little while. I started watching this show and falling asleep to it, and ever since then, there has not been a single night I haven’t fallen asleep to a show. I have to have something playing, someone talking, just so I know I am not alone. TVD helped me get through not having my sister at home, since it was her first year at college when I was in 8th grade.
Some people may wonder why or how a show could bring comfort. Its plot is fantasy, and the characters are not real. So how could something completely fictional be something I could rely on? The truth is, it wasn’t at first. I was anxious to know what was going to happen the first time watching it, wondering who might die, etc. Rewatching it was the real source of comfort because I knew exactly what was going to happen. I didn’t have to guess, I knew. It helped me because there was something that I knew for certain in my life; I didn’t know that anything else was guaranteed in reality. And nothing is guaranteed in reality, you can’t guess what life will throw at you.
The thing that made TVD different was that I never got sick of watching it on repeat. Other shows I couldn’t watch more than once or twice, but I could watch this one for a lifetime. Something about that has never made sense to me. The plot is ever-changing throughout the seasons, and the storyline is complicated. The feeling when I watch it is not something I can explain. It is like I don’t have to worry about the future when I’m watching it because I know everything that the future holds for the characters. Then, when I’m not watching it, stressing about my future is all I can do.
I guess the comfort isn’t in what I’m seeing through the screen, but it’s in what I know for certain. My future is all I ever think about regarding grades, sports, college, and what I want to do with my life. The Vampire Diaries gives me a break from thinking about that, really from thinking about anything at all.
