marzipan77

Day #2: My Fannish History, or, A Crippling Home-life Leads to Wish-Fulfillment

Dark days. Long nights. Anger. Cursing. Hitting. Cutting words. Belittling. Which kid wouldn't want to live somewhere else, with other people. People who were heroes, who saved others, who put themselves in danger time after time to help the hurting. And who, so very often, were wonderfully, handsomely, heroically hurt themselves? (And looked exceptional doing it!)

Okay, yes, there were some hormones wrapped up in it as well.

My heroes:

Ilya Kuriakin, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., 1964 (David McCallum)
Spock, Star Trek, 1966 (Leonard Nimoy)
Steve Burton, Land of the Giants, 1968 (Gary Conway)
Pete Cochran, Mod Squad, 1968 (Michael Cole)
Paul Foster, UFO, 1970 (Michael Billington)
Johnny Gage, Emergency!, 1972 (Randolph Mantooth)
Gil Foley, Chopper One, 1974 (Dirk Benedict)
Ken Hutchinson, Starsky and Hutch, 1975 (David Soul)

Those were the foundation days of my fandom interest. Yes, I wrote fanfic. Mod Squad and Star Trek and S&H. I wrote with a blue bic pen in my school notebooks. I lay in bed at night and dreamed about what I would have written instead of the episodes I'd just seen. I wrote better endings, more meaningful conversations, deeper friendships. I wrote H/C, Angst, and team as family. That is what ties all those shows together. Team.

Because, as a child, that's what I wanted. I wanted a family that was closer, better, kinder, more loving than my own. And, more than hormones, more than pretty people doing daring things, I LOVED the team-as-family dynamic of my favorite shows. Ilya and Napoleon. Spock and Kirk and McCoy. Pete, Julie, and Linc. Johnny and Roy. Gil and Don. S&H. I hated the episodes that broke that friendship; that set up reasons for the men and women of these found families to betray each other, to hurt each other. Because I already knew that life - and I knew it wasn't The Way Things Were Supposed To Be.

College didn't leave a lot of time for fandom, but that was okay because I'd discovered a real-life found family. Escaping from home to live at school revealed all of life's colors, deeper and richer than I ever suspected. I found my soulmate. Learned about love (still learning) and started that family of my own.

After raising my daughter - the best fandom buddy of all - having various work families, church families, and neighborhood families, I found myself in a dark place again. Alone. Laid-off/retired. Daughter finding her own family at college. We were transferred to a new place without the comforting, loving presence of work or neighborhood or church families. Depression. Dark thoughts. Hopelessness.

And then I found fan fiction.

Surfing the net, lying in bed, refusing to get up, to live, I found fanfiction.net. I read stories about those friends and family I'd loved all those years ago. I cried. A lot. And, eventually, I started writing my own stories about them. One decision made the difference.

I hit "post."

And people sent me feedback. Other fans. Women - mostly around my age - who had found their childhood heroes again, just like me. And those people, those other fans, those strong, beautiful-souled women, saved my life. Literally.

C-san. OneofAradia. Sallye. iiiionly. Lyn. DebC. DennyJ. Holly. Jenn. Kelly. DebA. SamAntilles. Annejackdanny. Diana. So many others.

Heart-sisters. Fandom twins. Sharing on-line stories spread to physical meetings, to hugs, long discussions, strong shoulders to cry on and hands to hold. Giggling and drooling over our heroes? Of course! And stories.

Face, The A-Team, 1983. (Oh, look! It's Dirk Benedict again!)
Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG-1, 1997. (Michael Shanks)
Severus Snape, HP movies, 2001. (Alan Rickman)
Tony DiNozzo, NCIS, 2003. (Michael Weatherly)
Spencer Reid, Criminal Minds, 2005. (Matthew Gray Gubler)
Ianto Jones, Torchwood, 2006. (Gareth David-Lloyd)

Team-as-family is still my jam. Because, while I found lots of families over the years to supplant my dysfunctional one, I still crave that closeness. That sense of the deepest devotion. Being understood all the way to my center. And I have that with my fandom sisters, too.

Are you struggling? Doubting that life is worth the pain? Hopeless? Have you been abused, hurt, abandoned? Reach out. Hit "post." We are here. We are waiting, anxious to help. To tell you that you are NOT alone. We don't have answers, but we have hands to hold and shoulders to cry on. And we understand how much you ache for connection.

Fandom Heals.