I don't know if this is even allowed, because I don't know if this is exactly a story. I mean, it might be. But there's no way to tell for sure. And there are rules, I understand that. Guidelines. That's fine, it's how it should be, and if this gets booted off I'll understand. Imagine this, the girl with the crimson glow hair, tucking it behind her ear, trying not to cry, smiling instead, saying, "I'll understand," After all, we all need guidelines.
It's Degrassi, I feel my obsession/love sort of waning and I don't want it to go. I don't want to leave those people but I guess I know it's not real, and I knew all along. But I so wanted it to be real, you know, seeing Craig in the halls. He's tall, and not that great looking at first. Just average. But then, then, he has that hard time with his dad, he has those tragic looks, the almost stutter. And I notice, so slowly, the hazel eyes, the full lips, the shape of his nose, the color of his hair and the way it curls. The texture of his voice, the emotions just under the surface of that voice so it's all there, the hurt and the fear and yet it's not. Subtle.
I wanted that to be real, him to be real. To be a real kid whose dad used to hit him and whose mom died and who was new at the school and had a hard time with science and who liked to take pictures and play music. I didn't want it to be an actor, to be Jake Epstein who is just acting. How real is that?
It's slipping away. Maybe I was Ashley for awhile, maybe I lost all my friends and found new ones, maybe I changed my hair and my make-up and my way of dealing with the world. Maybe I met that troubled new boy with the difficult home life.
There's all new people in the hallways now. I don't know these people, two Heather Sinclair look-alikes and some punk girl with a lip piercing and the kids who killed J.T. Who are they? I don't have any background on them, not like Jimmy and Spinner and Ashley and J.T. and Marco and Ellie. These new people are intrusions, unwelcome intrusions. They can't compete.
Maybe I got all caught up in the Degrassi world because things were wrong in my world. Maybe my self-esteem had fallen to unacceptable levels and I needed a way out, and that was Craig. The small things struck me hard, the way Craig looked startled and scared when Albert knocked the plate off the table. The quick looking back and forth before he went into his house after the birthday party at Emma's house because he knew what was in store.
And when things were particularly hard in my real world I'd sing that song to myself, the one about everything turning to dust. I'd close my eyes and see Craig onstage in his jean jacket and holding the notebook paper with the song lyrics scribbled on it. I'd lean against the cool brick walls and wish that it was really real just for one second.
What was it about Craig? The most tragic of the characters by far and I like that. I like a character who is taken down to the bone, everything stripped away. In that first episode of his it doesn't get any more real. He walks down to the dark room, down in the cellar, the subconscious. It's in ruins and the expression on his face, the anger and confusion, perfect, perfect. And his dad comes down, yelling at him, hitting him and beating him, and he's thrown to the ground, hard cement cellar floor. Doesn't life do that all the time? Just sort of throws you to the floor, and you try to explain but there are no words, there is no way to make anyone see…
It's slipping away. I don't watch it so much anymore, maybe because Craig is gone and even if he was there it wouldn't be the same. He's practically not a teenager anymore, he's not even high school age anymore. I liked seeing him at his locker, walking from gym class, sitting in the cafeteria with a little carton of milk. Cheating on Ashley. Practicing with the band. Studying for science. Gone, gone.
And my world really isn't so terrible anymore. I've reached a better place than when Craig first came into it, the camera around his neck, talking all nervous to his dad in the kitchen. I don't need Degrassi like that anymore, like an opiate to dull the pain. So the pain is mostly gone but I still want my opiate for it's sake. It's hard to let go. It's hard to let go of Ashley singing her creepy goth songs to Jimmy. It's hard to let go of Ellie trying to help her drunk mom and then cutting her porcelain arms.
I know it's not real. I keep repeating that like a mantra but I know. It's actors learning lines and blocking scenes and writers writing it all. It isn't life. It isn't heroin. Craig left. He went away because Jake Epstein went away. New characters are coming in but I can't relate to them, not like I could before. It was delusional, it was an alternate reality that existed for me, that sort of still does.
It served it's purpose, I suppose. I use these pop cultural phenomena's in lieu of drugs, in lieu of gambling, in lieu of everything because they are safe and they are legal and I'm weird. Craig isn't real, he was never real. How could I be in love with him then? How could he carry the pain of my existence if he himself did not exist?
There's really nothing left to explore as far as Degrassi goes. I've seen the episodes where Craig's father dies and when he sings the songs to Ashley and where he does coke and when he's manic. I've seen the episodes with Rick shooting Jimmy and J.T. dying and Liberty being pregnant and Manny getting an abortion and Marco coming out. I saw Craig and Joey deal with the father/son relationship they had, I saw Ashley deal with her father being gay, Manny deal with her parents being strict and reactionary.
Okay, so that's it. I guess I'm saying goodbye. Goodbye to Degrassi because there is nothing there for me anymore. Goodbye to Craig because he isn't real anymore. Goodbye to my bizarre coping mechanism because I don't need it anymore. It's time to go. Time to bow out gracefully. Time to let the stage lights get dim and go out.
But Craig, I did really love you once. Maybe some teeny tiny part of me always will.