“Look,” my friend told me, the first time he sat me down to watch Dr. Who. “It’s show that’s been rebooted from the 60s, so a lot of the space stuff doesn’t look super sophisticated, but that’s part of the charm. Give it two episodes.” Spoiler: I did not need two episodes. I was sold the minute the Doctor slid his hand into Rose’s and cheerfully told her to run. At nineteen, I was struck by the depth of the worldbuilding, the chemistry between the leads, the mystery of the week. At thirty, what I cannot escape is that feeling of recognition, seeing a deeply lonely person and thinking yes yes me too.
Loneliness is the feeling I understand best, I think. Were I Captain Planet, my depression and anxiety would always take the form of being alone. I tell myself I love my alone time, and I do—I think. I can just never be sure if I taught myself to love it because I had to find some joy in it to survive. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t have friends who care about me deeply, with their whole hearts. I have many such friends, relationships that have grown and bent and changed to fit the shape of the people we have become. And yet.
I have to tell myself it isn’t about a relationship, to write this. On some level, I know that is what it is, that’s all it is. I am thirty after all, this comes for you. I looked up one day and everyone was married or dating the same person for years and I was, as usual, drifting. I’ve never been good at dating; I’m never the friend who will introduce you to a new partner, never giggly and bubbly about someone I met in a bar. It is as though I am missing some connective tissue, or I missed the class where everyone learned how date and I just noticed I was out that day. For a long time, I don’t know that it bothered me, not it in the way it does now.
Maybe it’s not about a relationship, not entirely. I’m currently jobless and careerless and without a relationship and generally directionless. I feel like at the age of thirty I should have figured one of those things out. I am sure older readers are chuckling fondly at me, hell I’m sure in ten years I’ll think about thirty year old me like I think about nineteen year old me now. The crushing pressure isn’t that I feel like I should have accomplished more, rather that I feel like I should be able to want something, anything out of life, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve drawn a blank.
All of this to say—Dr. Who is a more powerful show than I remembered.
XO
CT