What are you Feeling Now that Supernatural is Over?
Fan/Writer #2
Supernatural is over. The rational side of me understands that 15 years is a long run and that everything comes to an end, but feelings aren’t always rational, and I have found myself feeling sad primarily because Dean Winchester is dead. I saw a GIF of him the other day, smiling playfully at the camera, and tears started welling up and I felt embarrassed because I’ve lived long enough to suffer agonizing real-life losses. What is a fictional character in comparison to real-life heartbreak?
Yet, stories are important. Stories help us escape; they inform us, entertain us, inspire us. The protagonists of these stories become important to us. Personally, I re-read favorite books often, returning to those familiar people and places and events over and over. In my mind, Anne lives perpetually in Green Gables. Scout and Jem still try to catch a glimpse of their reclusive neighbor. Mary Lennox explores a long-lost garden, and Jim Hawkins wakes in the night with his heart pounding, imagining a parrot screeching, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” But, for me, Dean is no longer driving the roads of America, playing Bob Seger and cracking jokes with his brother, because we saw him die. Someday, perhaps, I will be able to picture him in Baby on those roads, but for now foremost in my thoughts is how his story ended. And endings to things I love or people I care about always make me cry. Every year in June, I find it hard to say goodbye to my sixth graders. I struggle not to get teary because they’re so excited for summer vacation and to move on to middle school, and it’s right and good that they do so, but I will still miss interacting with them in a classroom: three years (4th-6th), five days a week, seven hours a day, 180 days a year — that’s a lot of time invested, and I may never see them again! I delight in their joy and I balance my sense of loss with the fond memories and the pride I have in what we achieved together. Holding on and letting go – the story of life.
So for now, I’ll feel this sorrow and trust that, with the passing of time, I will be able to once again see him with his brother traveling the back roads of the United States, saving people and hunting things.
- I’m the Co-Editor-in-Chief, Social Media Manager (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), Live Tweet Moderator, reviewer and feature writer for The Winchester Family Business. Before joining the Supernatural Family, I worked for 22 years at a global consulting firm, but after years of long hours, high pressure and rigorous demands, I quit corporate life to raise my children. After my first Supernatural convention, I was driven to share my shock and awe in a two-part essay that The WFB was brave enough to post, and my second life calling, that of being a writer, began. My first published book, Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga was released in late 2016. Please share in my cross-fandom excitement by following its Facebook page @FanPhenomenaTwilight and my personal Twitter account @LSAngel2. You can read about this whole miraculous transition in my chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood, published in May 2017.
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