We all have that one show that we feel just gets us. Connection is the root of fan bases. Some shows are more expected than others. The random passerby might find it weird if someone called "Supernatural" relatable. But, for me, it hits home for a lot of reasons.
When you're 15, you don't feel like anybody understands you. It's a cliché. You don't even feel like your fellow 15-year-olds understand you.
And how could they understand you, with everything that happened? When a series of a family member's acute episodes of psychosis makes an agnostic wonder if possession exists? When the cops and EMTs are called and you find yourself outside at 2 o'clock in the morning holding your dog tight, knowing that your childhood is officially over?
I clutched the shaggy blonde mass in my arms, trying to keep her comforted while I glanced at the home I lived in for 10 years and the bulk of my childhood, knowing that this house as I knew it would never be the same. I would never enter this house the way I entered it this morning. Things were going to be different. Forever.
The police officers interviewed me, but new mental wounds made speaking incredibly difficult. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words came out scrambled (sometimes the word order, sometimes the letters of an individual word). All I knew was my mind was as overloaded as it had ever been.
And after that attempt at an interview was when my ride came. As I drove away from the scene,
trying to mentally digest everything that happened, I also began processing the start of a new life with a former military single parent that wore a brown leather jacket and loved rock music.
My friends that know "Supernatural" joke about my being the long-lost Winchester. To go in chronological order, I'll start with my declaration in kindergarten that pie was my favorite vegetable. According to my five-year-old logic, if you could put vegetables inside a pie, surely that makes it one.
Around the middle of kindergarten I moved to a neighborhood that was rumored to be haunted. In early elementary school, I fully believed it was. Despite my fear I did two things: 1) made up a wild story about angry zombie ghost cows to mess with my older brother, and 2) took it upon myself to be the neighborhood's resident ghost hunter, because someone had to do it.
My brother didn't believe the first one, because he was a rational curmudgeon. He also did not accept my invitation to ghost hunt with me, because he didn't believe the rumors. In a fit of anger I told him how selfish he was being for not wanting to help people, which he brushed off. After trying hard to convince him, I took it upon myself to hunt all the ghosts myself. When the family dog came along, I recruited her.
I also grew up with the legend of the Bombediers. A myth designed to keep children from running off into the woods at my local day camp, Bombediers were people-eating monsters that would take on the appearance of the last person they ate. While I was terrified, I was also inspired to rid the area of all Bombediers when I grew up. And technically, since there aren't any, I sort of won without doing anything. The lowest-effort hunt ever.
"Supernatural" helped me to romanticize my situation. Losing a childhood home? The pilot episode. Having moved the most out of everyone I knew? Just like Sam and Dean. Former military single parent? Basically a Winchester. Religion homework? Pretend it's research for a hunt. Feeling disconnected from classmates who couldn't fathom what I was going through? Like Sam and Dean never felt that.
"Supernatural" helped me find my inner badass. Something I desperately needed at that time. As I watched Sam and Dean fight literal demons, I learned how to fight my inner demons. Sure, some call the show cheesy, but when hasn't cheese made everything better?
