Did anyone else have really profound lovesick feelings for fictional characters (including cartoon characters) when they were a child? Asking for a friend...

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Okay, first of all, fuck the word “crush,” but what I mean is a painfully lonely yet implacable, ineffable, profound feeling of longing, yearning, and...a kind of almost intolerable sadness, I suppose.

Am I already losing you? Don’t worry, I’m asking for a friend.

In all seriousness, though I think we can all
relate to feeling lovesick at sometime in our lives or another. I’m just fascinated by the feeling, and why I felt it so powerfully as a young child. I was reminded of it last night when someone posted the Punky Brewster (a popular eighties TV show featuring a cute, 7-year-old girl named “Punky”, played by actress Soleil Moon Frye) theme song on Facebook.

Upon listening to the theme song, all these memories...feelings...of that loneliness, nostalgia, and longing came flooding back.

I was 4 or 5 at the time I was obsessed with “Punky.” Weirdly, that kind of empty spot still exists within me. Like a longing for connection. I don’t know what tone this article is going to take, and how much psycho-spiritual analysis I can do here, but I’d like to explore this a little bit.

There’s nothing unusual about having a “crush” on a fictional character, but I think there is something worthy of a second look, especially when the feelings are so powerful that yearning feeling can come flooding back even at 34 years old! Now I’m in a place, unlike when I was a child, to observe it in a more detached manner, and I think that such observance probably carries some useful wisdom hidden within it somewhere.

I think for me, as someone who has always been what one might call “girl crazy,” (one female friend once epiphanously observed of me: you really like women, don’t you?) I perhaps didn’t get all the nurturing I needed as a child from my mom--and dad (though they meant well, I love them, and do not "blame" them)--and then conflated that longing with these characters who I felt could somehow “fill the void.” That’s my working theory at this moment.

Or maybe it’s just a normal thing that happens to everybody. I don’t know. I don’t wanna get too, too heavy here either, so let’s move on.

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Cartoons

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SHORT LIST OF CARTOON CHARACTERS I HAD IT BAD FOR:

Minnie Mouse

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Snow White

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Princess Jasmine

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Alright, this shit is making me laugh right now, so let’s try and clarify what’s going on here. First of all, maybe analyzing an experience will help.

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I remember when I first saw Disney’s Aladdin. I was depressed for like a week after. I think I was, what? 7 years old? Anyway, I was so bummed because Aladdin’s adventure with Jasmine was so fucking fantastic. She was so beautiful. But more than that. More than that. The connection that she and the protagonist (a homeless, family-less boy/male) had in the movie was something I really wanted!

Oh Jesus, I think I am noticing a pattern here. My God, how does writing these diatribes on Steemit always do this for me. The pattern? Well, look at Snow White, Punky Brewster, and Jasmine. All kind of lonely, orphaned, homeless wanderers. Punky’s parents left her in the supermarket. Jasmine’s dad didn’t understand her. Snow White, well, that’s just fucked up. But, wow. Never thought of it this way before. Let’s continue and see what else emerges.

My Girl - From Cartoons to Grade School Heroines

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Still from the 1991 film, My Girl.

My grandma took me to see either My Girl, or My Girl 2. I can’t remember which. Maybe 2. Either way, again. After watching the film...I wanted to be in that world. My life seemed so boring and stupid. Where was my Anna Chlumsky??? These kids were in elementary school, we're super fucking cool/weird, and were falling in love! I had never been kissed. I didn’t have a pal like this!

I feel like this is often a very harmful aspect of Hollywood and fiction in general. For those that need to deal with real emotional issues in their lives, the movies and other fiction can really give us—especially as children—unrealistic ideas about ourselves, love, and reality. And an “escape,” allowing and encouraging is to think someday I will be in that world, if only A, B, or C action is taken. This action usually involves consuming something. Big joke, hey?

Still, there was something this character as well. Anna Chlumsky in the My Girl movies played a girl named Vada Sultenfuss. An 11-year-old hypochondriac whose mother died giving birth to her. She’s terrified of and obsessed with death. She’s misunderstood and ignored by her funeral-director father, and struggles with a constant sense of guilt. She ends up meeting a boy, played by Macaulay Culken, who is also a social outcast of sorts, and a very unique and interesting individual.

The plot is really pretty deep and intricate.
You should read about it here.

Well, there we have it. Another beautiful, motherless, colorful female protagonist with an unusual name, who finds a profound connection with another social outcast.

And then...holy shit...another. What is this thing in Hollywood about motherless female characters with weird dads...?

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Christina Ricci in the 1995 film Casper.

The lovesick, crazy profound feeling returned when I saw Casper in 4th or 5th grade. I think I strongly identified withCasper—a ghost who eventually turns back into a human just for a brief time, owing to Ricci’s character’s love (and her deceased, angelic, loving mother's love) for him—because of his loneliness and wish to be human, and to remember what that was like. Yes, very deep and who knows, but the plot to this “children’s movie” is pretty profound and articulate.

SUPER DOUBLE OVERKILL!

DED.

Alright, I’ve got to wrap this up. My son and my own Japanese Punky Brewster are now awake.

I think what it comes down to is this: loneliness and feelings of solitude and being misunderstood can be very hard to deal with, especially when we have had broken connections with those around us who are supposed to validate and care about us most. Especially in our formative years.

We can long and desire to escape our own lives and become someone else. Go into the world of a story and find true love, understanding, and a wildly exciting, new kind of real self-acceptance. If the damage done has been particularly bad, this desire to escape, and unpleasant, negative self-regard (damaged sense of self-worth) can result in searching for a “perfect” love. A profound connection with another who has also been damaged by an uncaring world.

DON'T WATCH THIS:

We can look to these strong characters (seeing ourselves in them) as our saviors. For men such as myself, it may be a strong, yet vulnerable heroine character. Especially if we didn’t always see or experience this type of character and validation in our mothers, I feel. As Bambi in the video above suffers the loss of his idyllic mother figure, many of us have also experienced this loss in one way or another, in an emotional and psychological sense. Bambi later finds Faline, his new heroine and "mother," in the movie.

Punky survived and found her way alone, even after being abandoned. She was confident, happy, and comfortable with herself. Vada Sultenfuss was into poetry and felt guilty for being “responsible” for her mother’s death. The movie My Girl even embraced the topic of Vada’s coming-of-age regarding natural human bodily changes and sexuality. This is something many of us were prohibited from discussing and healthily exploring as youngsters. Boys especially, I feel, are made to feel guilty for being curious about these natural processes, especially where females are concerned.

Jasmine was a strong person. Snow White made her own way through the woods. These characters were unique, like us, and this connection is important, and can be helpful in some sense. That said, Hollywood tends to take advantage of the fact that so many are lonely, and want to find this type of wonderful, exciting, unconditional love. Hollywood and modern cult-ure often attempt to make us feel very unimportant and not unique, wonderful, or noteworthy at all, and tell us instead to "just watch the movies," in so many words.

About that dolla. Money I made featuring myself, in third grade :)

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My wife. My own “Punky,” just said to me after we discussed this a bit: “you fell in love with yourself.”

Yes. A self I had rejected, and whose value I had pinned to characters I could relate to as a kind of salvation.

All these characters simultaneously seemed so unlike me. So brave, so strong, so beautiful, and so singularly unique. I had felt more like a shameful chameleon. I thought I was very uninteresting and undesirable. I just wanted to feel validated. To have that magic kiss like Casper the ghost, as a “real boy.”

Looking back, though, I always was one. The people attracted to these strong, weird and beautiful, colorful characters, are often attracted to this very same beauty they see in themselves, it would seem, even if they are unwilling or unable to recognize it.

How much more powerful we become when we do recognize it!

So, to all my cartoon crushes and strong-willed heroines I longed to be with forever, in perpetual happiness, thank you.

It would seem the ineffable longing is telling me something very important about the person I must finally come to accept, unconditionally, should true happiness ever be found. Myself.

~KafkA

!

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Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DLive and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)