#and my other coworker who said that she's saved all of the artwork I've shown her in a folder on my phone

[africanmorning]

This didn't happen very recently, but at some point within the past couple years I finally managed to see the first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and man was that a huge perspective shift for me.

See, I've already seen pieces of ATLA before. When I was a kid, someone gushed to me about how good the show was and showed me a couple random episodes completely out of context. I hated it on sight, for pretty much all the same reasons I hated most other children's media at the time. If you had asked me then, I would have simply said that I thought the show was stupid. But after some time, I realized that no amount of "stupidity" explained the resentment and sheer anger that these shows, including ATLA, created in me at the time. The problem wasn't that the shows were "stupid," the problem was that the shows were fun.

Fun was not something I got to experience a lot of in my childhood. If I had to pick out a single, most defining aspect of it, I'd probably say either "anxiety" or "loneliness." For as long as I can remember, I knew that I had a lot of expectations that I needed to meet, and mistakes were not tolerated. You could say that I was a "high-performing, very well-behaved" child.

So, imagine, then, how I felt watching TV shows where the kids were silly, goofed off, and made bad choices that often resulted in nothing more than a slap on a wrist—all portrayed with a casual air of "These are children! This is what childhood is like!" Can you understand how infuriating that was to someone like me? To be shown, as far as I was concerned, a fake, fanciful lie? A lie that I was sure was even making my life worse, because it must be convincing children and adults that children are irresponsible fools, and if more adults knew that children could be responsible, and smart, and obedient . . . then maybe they would treat me better.

Over time, I grew less judgmental of ATLA and shows like it, but I was still pretty confident that it simply wasn't "for me."

The irony of this is not lost on me. Though I still haven't watched ATLA proper, from what I've heard about the show since, I was probably the exact kind of kid that many of the messages were intended for.

The problem?

Of the episodes I had seen, Zuko either was not in them, or played such a minor or out-of-context role that I learned nothing about him.

So, when I was in my mid-twenties, finally seeing Zuko in episode one as my roommate watched it in our shared living space, I was fascinated.

THAT was the character I had needed. THAT was the character I understood. Someone who had been molded into something unloveable. Someone who had no more power over it than wet clay has over the potter's hands. Someone who, deep down, knew this wasn't the right way to be, the way they wanted to be, but to be anything else would be to become destroyed. That was huge.

Because. Yeah. In retrospect, I was a fucking asshole as a kid, at least to other kids. But looking back, I also know that it was the only way I could be. In my isolation, it was the only thing I knew. And even then I knew that I was fucking up. I just didn't know how to change it. And once I finally got exposed to a wider world, saw that there were other possibilities, I did change. A lot. But it took a long time, and it was hard, because the same changes that would have won the approval of my peers, made me a better part of society, would have also destroyed me at home. The same things that made me unloveable also made me survive. I don't think I can explain the confusion I had for the longest time when interacting with other children. It went something like, "How can you be that way so openly, so happily, when I cannot? What is so different between you and I, that the same things that bring you joy could only ever cause me pain?" Even now, that unloveability still follows me. I once saw someone say that loneliness is self-fulfilling because others can sense the loneliness on you and are repelled by it, and I'm inclined to agree. It's no one else's fault. Of course they would be repelled by someone like me, who either clings so much that it's suffocating, or becomes so afraid of clinging that I become aloof and unreachable.

Anyway. Zuko is relatable, and seeing him has really recontextualized the entire series for me. It's kind of a relief, really. I know he gets a redemption arc, and I don't think a lot of characters I relate to in this way do. I've been holding on to those kinds of messages lately—the ones that tell me that I might have a future. Though, man, I wish I'd had an Uncle Iroh like he did, to hold my hand through everything and help me get to that better place in the end. Maybe things wouldn't be so hard now.