My Skin’s On Too Tight
Living with the entwined burdens of chronic pain and depression.
I hit rock bottom when I wept watching Xena: Warrior Princess.
It was June 18, 2001. (I know because I just looked it up on IMDb.) I’d been a fan of the television series for years, in no small part because of lead Kiwi actress Lucy Lawless clad in leather. Now it was coming to an end.
In the series finale, Xena is dead, and despite heroic but fruitless efforts to resurrect her, the warrior princess’s implied lover, Gabrielle, is left alone. The scene that got to me is the final one, with a long shot from the sky showing the latter standing solo on the bow of a ship sailing into some new unknown life. Alone. All alone.
My reaction was disproportionate to the cheesy made-for-syndicated-TV moment. But I could feel in my soul the heartbreak, loneliness, and loss that Xena’s best friend experienced. I cried at the thought of the two lovers separated — one dead and the other left to live on without her.
I knew it was silly to weep at a fantasy TV show, but something deeper was going on inside me. Even though I was surrounded by people — my wife, my three daughters, my mother and brother, my friends, my coworkers — inside I felt so alone.
