People always leave or how One Tree Hill taught me the concept of mortality

In my early teens, I wasn’t very into series and pop culture. The only things I watched were Veronica Mars and One Tree Hill. It wasn’t much but I realized that these two shows did play a very important role in the way I would navigate through life. Let’s face it, One Tree Hill wasn’t really a very good show. Also, it didn’t age very well. It’s a show that I never would want to watch again, unlike Veronica Mars for example (Veronica is still very much my role model and it’s never going to change). Much too cringy, much too politically wrong on so many topics.

Nevertheless, I owe a lot to One Tree Hill. One Tree Hill was indeed the show that taught me that I was bisexual. I used to watch it in my grandparents’ house on Saturday afternoons. I remember one episode where the teens had to record video messages for a capsule that wasn’t to be opened for 100 years. In one of the videos, one of the female characters (whose name I don’t remember) came out as a bisexual woman and explained that she’s already fell in love with both men and women. I remember watching this sequence and thinking to myself “oh boy, these feelings I’ve had with me forever, it has a name, interesting”. I was 12 years old and to be able to put a name to this outpouring of feelings that I had always felt without really being able to express them was really liberating. But I also rapidly understand through the episode that I wasn’t something I should tell people, as the girl’s bisexuality wasn’t really accepted by her family and the other students. I think I learned to be ashamed of my bisexuality the same minute I learned I was bisexual. One Tree Hill, that wasn’t that clever.

Later that year, my grandparents of my father’s side, with whom I had always watched the show, became ill. I didn’t know it at the time but the last episode I watched at their house was that famous episode where Peyton’s mother (Peyton is one of the main character) dies, as the two of them just got back together, her mother having abandoned her at birth. I was devastated and I remember crying for hours and hours. I think it was the first time I really realized that my parents could die. That maybe I, too, could be Peyton and have scatter my mother’s ashes in a place that she’d have loved. This episode confronted me with fears I didn’t even know I had. I mean, I was 12.

Soon after, my grandfather died. My grandmother, his wife, decided then life without him wasn’t really worth it, so she kind of let herself die. On the day she died, my parents were at her bedside and therefore, left me with my grandparents on my mother’s side. It was a Saturday afternoon. To keep myself busy and not to worry too much, I was allowed to watch TV. Saturday afternoon. One Tree Hill was on, but no new episodes, only reruns. And among those reruns, of course, the episodes with Peyton’s mom. When I found out, at first I thought I was wrong the last time I watched the show. That I hadn’t correctly understood the story. In fact, the reruns had shown me sequences with Peyton’s mother that I hadn’t seen yet. I thought to myself, “fine, it was just a mistake, she’s not actually dead”. Then I kept watching and the one episode I knew came. I watched it again, as Peyton realized that she shared her talent for drawing with her mother, I knew I was fucked and that the mother would die soon. I still was watching when Peyton goes to her mother’s house and finds her dead on the floor. Then the ashes too. I could have turned off the TV. I could have stopped watching. But I was fascinated. Fascinated that it was all so inevitable: Peyton’s mom was going to die and there was nothing I could do to change that. The tears came back after the episode was over. My grandparents thought I was crying for my grandmother. I wasn’t, I was crying over the death of Peyton’s mother, and the inevitable death of my mother which I was not going to be able to avoid, just as I had not been able to avoid the end of the episode. An hour after that, my grandmother died. I didn’t cry.

So, since I was 12 years old, I’ve been associating mortality with Peyton’s mother in One Tree Hill. Every time I’ve lost someone I loved, I’ve always said to myself, “People always leave,” even though it’s the most cliché phrase ever. Every time, I thought of Peyton and her mother. Every time, I thought that I should have actually prepared myself for it, that One Tree Hill had kind of warned me. I almost felt guilty to be so emotional and sad each time. Because I should know. As sure as Peyton’s mother would always be dead in the show, the people I love would always end up with leaving me.

Luckily, my mother is still alive. But my father is no longer. He died many years after I stopped watching One Tree Hill. When I learned of his death (in a very traumatic kind of way), one of my first thoughts was for Peyton, that’s to say how much this show impacted me unconsciously. Because to instantly think of a show you watched when you were 12 years old, as you understand your father just died is not so insignificant. But that’s what happened.

The years went by and now, I am more or less at peace with the fact he abandoned me when I was 17 and completely lost in my life (actually, it’s rather less than more). But I’m still unable to watch the episode of Peyton’s mother death. I actually think I’ll never able to watch again. It would be far too painful and it would mean I’d have become really good with working on my emotions, and I’m really not sure that it is the path I’m going to take. Right now, it really doesn’t seem like it. But along the years, as I progressed through the stages of accepting my grief, I realized that everything I was going through, I would be reliving it anyway many times over. And many times, I wondered if there was any point in wanting to work at not being sad anymore if I was going to do it again every 5 years (or 10 for what I know), approximatively. Because if I may remind you, “People always leave”. And indeed, they do.

People always leave. But then, — and wait for the big learning experience — I realized that for me to notice that people left me, then it meant that before leaving, people had stayed. And that their stay really did matter to me. That my pain and suffering caused by their loss was the testament of our love and of all the things we shared. And that it is actually my choice to focus on the time when people were there than the time when they left. I mean, it’s not easy, because as the days pass, what becomes near is their absence. Their presence really do fade away. It really can become an everyday struggle to remember a voice and a laugh.

People always leave. One Tree Hill was right. And because of it, I had something I could relate to when the young me was confronted with the mortality and death for the first time. As I stopped to watch the show, I never knew how Peyton dealt the death of her mother. Maybe I should have continue watching and I would have learned more quickly to let go of my sadness and grief. Or not, because let’s be honest, the show had some pretty fucked up plot lines. So in a way, it may be better maybe that I found my way out of this grieving situation all be myself. Actually, I’m not totally out of it. And I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. But anyway, I’m working on it and that’s what matter.
But if it does happen, then — may be — I’ll be able to deal with death without thinking about Peyton… I think it would really show that a lot of work has been done. And who knows, may be I am going to watch that episode again, in like probably several years from now. And may be, it’ll be okay. Maybe.

Picture’s credits: https://www.deviantart.com/berrybarri/art/People-always-leave-191077293