Current condition: Drifting without purpose after a good drama.
I swear, finishing a good drama is like saying goodbye to a lifelong lover.
Realistically, it only takes a few days to binge watch a series… but once you finish it, it’s hard to imagine what life once was without it. Sometimes it gets so bad that you have to question all the fundamentals of your lifestyle…
How do I eat?
How do I sleep?
What do I do when I’m bored?
What joy is there in life when you don’t have an episode to watch?
How do I live?
How do I human?
How do I freedom?
How do I happy?
For the past few days, I’ve been watching a particular Korean drama, and have been living and breathing the drama. You see, when I watch something, I become so emotionally invested in that medium. When anything slightly good or bad happens, my entire being is jolted. A character is betrayed? I’ll be lying on my bed on my back clawing at the air in front of me, while kicking all the space around me. Two of the characters finally kiss? I’ll be rolling and grinning and pumping my fist in the air and punching my bed and squealing. Character A finally figures out Character B's identity? I’ll stop breathing and start gritting my teeth in immense anticipation. Someone stumbles embarrassingly onto their face? I’ll be pausing the episode, and giving myself time for my snorting and chortling, possibly accidentally falling off my bed while I get carried away. Someone gets kidnapped? I’ll be immobile, while my eyes dart across my laptop screen hurriedly consuming those subtitles to find out what’s happening next while I struggle to breathe in my fetal position. The show ends? I’ll start to write a ranting article about that enduring pain in my heart– that hole left gapingly open, stinging and stinging. Then you look back on all the laughs, the tears, the fist pumps you’ve experienced with that drama… and you simply feel…
E
m
p
t
y
.
.
.
Really, finishing a drama is a type of heartbreak. It’s not just withdrawal symptoms this time: it’s Series Shatter Syndrome. It will leave your life in shattered pieces of happiness and sadness, repeatedly, and makes you go off drifting into oblivion with a hollow, echoing ache. It’s a mixed feeling. You’re grateful and ecstatic that this drama was in your life, but you’re devastated the journey is over. I always find myself wishing that you could erase your memory and re-watch the entire series to relive all those emotions and thrills again.
After I finish a show, I generally spend the next few hours rampaging the internet, change my desktop wallpaper, watch my favourite scenes of the drama again, and listen to the OST for the next week. (I find the OST is a simple but powerful way to live particular scenes of a series. You have no idea– I flicker through all the feels with a mere 3-minute song, it’s crazy.) Then maybe… just maybe, I’ll dabble my toes into another drama when I feel like that plunging despair has passed.
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