Hero fantasy

I dated a guy who was big into fantasies - calm down, it's not that kind of post - and I mean all types. Sexual fantasies, sure, but that (as stated above) is not the topic of this post. And also fantasy the genre, but given that I have a Jedi costume and The Lord of the Rings was a major part of my adolescence (I cried during the opening of The Hobbit), I tend to attract those kind of people. No, I specifically mean fantasies like "Caregiver fantasy" (which can easily segue into Wounded Soldier Fantasy, and then we're back into "not talking about this" territory) or "Badass with a heart of gold fantasy." Phrased better, because the way he put it was stupid, he meant tropes we see in movies played out in our own realities. It's part of the hegemonic process that we emulate what we see on the television, then that in turn gets fed back into the media machine in an endless feedback loop of stupid, simplified social performances.

And that right there just REEKS of Liberal Arts degree, so lemme give it to you plain - we see characterizations on TV or in the movies or in books, and those tell us how we ought to behave. The nebulous forces creating the TV, the movies, the books see us behaving a certain way, and recreate those (often exaggerated) on the screen or the page. Then we see those ways we ought to behave and so on and so forth. It's how we get standardized ideas of how men and women behave, how kids behave, how adults behave, etc. So when this guy pointed out people in "fantasies" and thought he was being so very clever, he was mostly just pointing out the effects of hegemony with some made-up terminology of his own.

The reason I bring this up is because he found it extremely strange I "don't have the Hero fantasy? Like, never?" Nope, never. "I don't believe you."

Well, that's his (and your) prerogative, and in the interest of being totally straight with you, "never" isn't totally accurate. When I started dating boys, I had somehow (read: from the TV, books, and movies I consumed) gotten into my daft, hormone riddled brain that the solution to every problem I had was with a man. There were, of course, a couple problems with that. First, I was 15 and anyone I dated was going to fall into that same demographic, which meant MAN was not on the menu, only BOY, and not even the prime cut. Second, the only problem I had was being 15, and ain't no solution to that but time. Of course, no 15 year old is aware that really her only problem is being 15, so I invented problems that all boiled down to "I'm emotionally fragile and cannot possibly make myself happy because I'm tragic. LOVE ME, DAMN IT." This is dumb, by the way. And (shockingly) did not solve my problems, real or perceived, and I was miserable.

So I wanted an emotional hero, went looking, and kept coming back with "404 hero could not be found. Please try another address." I think I've gotten much better at not making my happiness dependent on another human being, but I can't judge really well. I've also become a caregiver, which makes me much, much happier. To paraphrase Tim Minchin, happiness is like an orgasm, concentrating on your own makes it go away, but concentrating on someone else's can be incredibly pleasant.

My mom is a huge caregiver - she's been the acting matriarch of both sides of my family for a very long time, she's be hugely supportive of me my whole life, and even my friends go to her before they go to their own parents. She is, in a word, a saint. And when I was 15, I was an idiot (as established) and did not want to be my mother. Apparently, this meant I did not want to be nice. I also have a cousin who bends herself into pretzels to please everyone, which inevitably pleases no one, least of all herself. But as I've gotten older, and needed quite a bit of help being happy, I learned to appreciate, and then admire the caregivers in my life, the people willing to prop me up when I needed it. And often when I needed it and didn't ask for it. Then, because we emulate what we admire, I tried being there for the people around me, too. It started small - buying drinks for broke friends, then got a little bigger to taking friends out when they got dumped because I didn't know what to say, then the realization I didn't need to say anything and should just listen, to now. I won't go into details... but I've become a caregiver, I think, and it also makes me infinitely happier than concentrating on my own misery.

So, exboyfriend, I do have the Hero Fantasy, just not the way you wanted. I get to be my own hero.