You know you're doing it wrong when you identify with Spike

[kaberett]

BUFFY: I love you.

SPIKE: No, you don't. But thanks for saying it.

So, uh, I know - intellectually - that I am surrounded by people who love and respect and value me?

But I don't believe it. I've spent too much of my life showing up in social circles, attempting to fix a few things, and then trying to vanish again before I do more harm than good; too much of my life having people deliberately and pointedly step in front of me to block me from conversation, with no-one intervening; too much of it hyperconscious of how much I'm speaking, constantly worrying about whether it's too much, whether I'm doing it wrong, whether I'm too much.

Which is not to say that I won't ever believe it: "I am loved, and worthy of love" and "impostor syndrome can fuck right off" are things I am working on. But - for now? It is nice to hear, but I don't believe people mean it.

Which is also some of what's fucking me up about the end of season 7: it's that Spike can't believe Buffy loves him, and it's supposed, I think, to be commentary on Buffy's One True Love (for the record, I think Spike is the least fucked-up relationship we're shown Buffy having, and I'm going to go on about this at length in a bit) and how it isn't him, but I think it's actually a lot more about how you are better than the worst thing you have ever done, and it's douchey to tell people how they feel, and how terrifying it is to trust people to mean it when they say they love you. It is losing control, and it is taking a leap, and it is trusting that the big bruise/from the longer fall looked perfectly white/in a few years./That astounded me most of all.

Simon Armitage is the other person I automatically turn to on the topic of trust and falling:

Homecoming

Think, two things on their own and both at once
The first, that exercise in trust, where those in front
stand with their arms spread wide and free-fall
backwards, blind, and those behind take all the weight.

The second, one canary-yellow cotton jacket
on a cloakroom floor, uncoupled from its hook
becoming scuffed and blackened underfoot. Back home
the very model of a model of a mother, yours, puts
two and two together, makes a proper fist of it
and points the finger. Temper, temper. Questions
in the house. You seeing red. Blue murder. Bed.

Then midnight, when you slip the latch and sneak
no further than the call-box at the corner of the street;
I'm waiting by the phone, although it doesn't ring
because it's sixteen years or so before we'll meet.
Retrace that walk towards the garden gate; in silhouette
a father figure waits there, wants to set things straight.

These ribs are pleats or seams. These arms are sleeves.
These fingertips are buttons, or these hands can fold
into a clasp, or else these fingers make a zip
or buckle, you say which. Step backwards into it
and try the same canary-yellow cotton jacket, there,
like this, for size again. It still fits.

Comments

[kaberett]

& of course I suspect it hit all the harder because I treat Buffy as identity-figure and because I have been viewing much of s7 with that in mind, and as such I'm already placing myself as the person who says "I love you", as the person who hears that response, and then suddenly I'm on both sides of the conversation and my heart breaks twice over.

[emperor]

I haven't really got Spike out of my head after the S7 readthrough I played him in, and so I still identify pretty strongly with him during s7[0]. I'm never quite sure if it's Buffy saying good-bye, Spike trying to make it easier for Buffy by being flippant, or... And I have only incoherent thoughts about the Buffy-Spike relationship and how it compares to Buffy-Angel.

[there's a whole other rant about how one particular Angel5 episode is So Wrong here, but spoilers]
[0] The church scene early in s7 breaks me in all sort of amusing ways

[kaberett]

I forgot to say thank you at the time, for the different perspective/insight/readings -- I am very grateful, and I do keep mulling them over.

I would really love for us to be in the same place and have Buffy/Angeltalks at some point! I suppose going along to the pub on a Thursday would be as good a way as any other for me to bend your ear about all this... :-)

[emperor]

Sorry, this has been sitting in the "you should reply to this" stack for too long! Life is a bit chaotic ATM, what with the impending house-move and suchlike; it's been a while since I've made Thursday-pub (but I hope to today). But yes, this is a fine suggestion, or you could come for dinner some time when things are a little more settled :)

[hairyears]

I remember "I wanna know how it ends" and I know that one day I will, too. Thankfully, that day is a long way off.