One of my favorite comic book series, just after Sandman, is Scott Pilgrim. I found the series, as well as the movie, really comforting when I was at my lowest point. Maybe it's because I identify so much with Scott Pilgrim as a character. He's kind of a nice guy but he's kind of a dick to the girls he dates, he's not really that good at anything, he has friends but they don't really like him, he falls ass over teakettle in love with a girl he sees in a dream and then finds out is a real person. I haven't been there on every single one of those instances, but you get my point. I have literally told someone,"I'm going to leave you alone forever now," just like Scott does the first time he actually speaks to the girl of his dreams.
I read Sandman again, particularly the book The Kindly Ones, when I know something terrible is about to happen and I want to revisit something I know like the back of my hand, but I read Scott Pilgrim again when I need to be reassured that even the least remarkable person can learn, and I've spent a lot of time feeling pretty unremarkable.
When I first read it, I really wanted to be Scott's love interest, Ramona Flowers. I have concluded that I will never be a Ramona Flowers. I will never get that many people to fall in love with me and then hate me that much. I kind of still wish I was a Ramona Flowers. Ramona is mysterious. She does not give much away. I give too much away. I dominate a conversation with so much information, all of it about me, or I try to impress someone with how many trivial facts I know about one specific thing to try to get them to like me. I wish I was guarded and unattainable, but I'm not. I will fall hopelessly in lesbians with someone I have only just met and I will always go too far trying to prove it. I will always be Scott Pilgrim.
It might be better to not strive to be a Ramona. Ramona is kind of a jerk. Almost all of her relationships end with her cheating on someone and she's kind of a coward. It would also be really annoying to be her. She tries to have a relationship with this charismatic, mysterious guy who wears awesome glasses and he pays her back for trying to leave when it gets to be too much by inflicting her with the Glow and pushing her around until she vanishes into Subspace. Then he forms a League of Evil Exes to control her love life? And every time she wants to date someone new, even someone as basically harmless as Scott, she has to see all of them again? Jeez. I don't have evil exes. My exes just kind of don't like me anymore. My exes are like Scott's exes. I have my Kim Pines, my one Knives Chau somewhere back there, and my one Envy Adams still fucking things up for me. The difference is, my ex isn't even some slinky, sexy rock star girl with a crazy awesome Evangalion hairstyle. He's just a guy who gave up, who runs into my stepmother and doesn't even ask how I'm doing. He has no interest in sabotaging my future happiness, but that is all due to the fact that he has no interest in me. And I still ask his mother how he is doing when I run into her even though I really want to not care.
There is something to be learned from how much Scott is willing to do for Ramona. It makes me wish I had that kind of pull with anyone. He is so obsessed with her that he is willing to fight everything and everyone that gets in his way. He mans up so completely, and so almost needlessly, that it holds up a dark mirror to my own past. Every time Scott does something in the name of all of that need, just to impress this really cool girl, I just want to reach into the book, pluck him out by the scruff of his neck and tell him, "Ssh, stop it. Just stop it," because I want to be able to do that to myself. I wish I could have pulled myself out of so many situations that arose over someone who didn't really warrant that kind of shit. I will never run out of Ramonas to fight over or new ways to look foolish.
I keep forgetting the point of all of it, or at least what I see the point as being. Ramona doesn't even end up being the reason for Scott becoming a better person. She's the impetus, but not the reason. The best fight, of course, is between Scott and Ramona's evilest ex, Gideon Graves, but before that, Scott has to battle himself. The most important fight is between Scott and Nega-Scott, who was created out of Scott's inability to see his own flaws, and the point is that Scott isn't meant to actually fight him, he is supposed to merge with him, and thereby accept all of his faults that he has ignored up to that point. I keep thinking about all of that negative, black energy I manifested when I got my heart broken, how it felt like carrying around a whole other person who hated me. I wonder where it actually went, or if it's still following me. I'm still trying to figure out if I did it right, if I actually zeroed in on what is wrong with me or if I've just spent the past year and a half identifying what is wrong with every person who has ever hurt me. Every time I get depressed, I feel like I am still just fighting the meanest, darkest version of myself, the side of me that wants to watch me drown. And I am still not sure I can even trust my own memories. I don't even have the luxury of blaming my one-sided recollection of things on someone implanting false memories in my head, the way Scott Pilgrim does. This is entirely my own doing. The ultimate enemy is always going to be me, but it's not even an enemy I can fight, it's an enemy I need to learn from. More to the point, this isn't a fight at all, so there is no chance of winning. Maybe the upside of that is that there is therefore no chance of losing. The game is rigged-you cannot lose if you do not play. Oh, shit, never mind, that's from The Wire. Fuck it, I'm going to go watch The Wire in its entirety from beginning to end for the fourth time and get Lance Reddick's face tattooed on my chest. And try to be a little less like Scott Pilgrim and be more like Deputy Cedric Daniels.
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