Since the end of Dexter Series 7 in December 2011, I have gone through withdrawals. Breaking Bad was an entertaining interlude, but all series combined could not satisfy my Dexter-lust. I suppose I should be ashamed of having been a TV whore, and get on and read the books for my fix.
As explored in my first post on Dexter, the character has many traits I relate to as having been a social outcast, and the feelings of dislocation from "normal" society.
Here are some more excerpts:
" I just know there's something dark in me. I hide it. Certainly don't talk about it. But it's there. Always. This … Dark Passenger. How when he's driving, I feel … alive. Half-sick with the thrill, complete wrongness. I don't fight him. I don't want to. He's all I've got. Nothing else could love me, not even … especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because, lately, there are these moments that I feel connected to something else. Someone. It's like … the mask is slipping, and things, people, that never mattered before, are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me."
As previously discussed, the darkness has strong synergies with experiences and descriptions of depression: that feeling that someone can see through your carefully constructed exterior, the shell that hides what you're ashamed of; a shift of your focus [the unfamiliar feeling of having a connection with a person] can shake the sense of security and leave you exposed and vulnerable; unaware of how to act in foreign territory.
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Miguel: "It doesn't have be this way"[with Dexter killing you!]
Dexter: "But it always does. I had high hopes for you, but I guess I just have to accept that I will always be alone."
As friendships, or even having a basic connection with a person is such an alien concept, it is easier to rationalise the situation as a blip in what is experienced as "normal". In order to cope, instead of becoming saddened or distressed at the conflict or loss of a friend (okay, it doesn't have to be through killing them, as in Dexter, but through an argument etc) by assimilating this information with the internal construction of self that "I am a loner, and will always be/ am better off alone", it is easier to cope with.
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[Enter hope] DM Monologue: "The Dark Passenger has been fighting against it, to keep me all to himself. But it is my turn now, to get what I want. To embrace my family. And maybe one day not so long from now, I’ll be rid of the Dark Passenger. It all begins with a getaway. Time away from the old me. Life doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be lived"...[Dexter finds Rita's dead body] "But it doesn't matter what I do, what I choose... I'm what's wrong. This is fate."
Having battled depression for most of my life, I can't begin to explain how many times I've felt like this. I don't mean having someone murdered, but that, on finding hope, something happens to take that hope away, and you internalise its cause:
"What just happened is not only my fault [even when due to external/ uncontrollable circumstances] but happened because I innately deserve it [ie it's fate/karma etc because I'm a bad person] ".
When internalising self as the root cause of all things bad which occur, this further transforms into not only "bad things always happen to me", but "bad things will always continue to happen to me, purely because I am me, and I deserve it".
It seems incredibly irrational when you say it out loud, or analyse it with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time it feels like an inescapable and endless hopeless situation.
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Dexter monologue: "Lumen said I gave her her life back... a reversal of my usual role. Well the fact is, she gave me mine back too.... Eyes that saw me, finally, for who I really am. And a certainty that nothing... nothing is set in stone. Not even darkness. While she was here, she made me think for the briefest moment I might even have a chance to be human. But wishes, of course, are for children. "
There are so many glimpses of hope- of a life that could be- but so suffocated by the world he knows, when Dexter fails to realise them he is quick to dismiss such thoughts as fleeting fantasies, and therefore unrealistic aspirations.
This is not uncommon in life. A common scenario:
1- Having a fulfilling relationship
2- losing that fulfilling relationship
Then there are the options of how to deal with this:
3a [the depressed self]- resolving the loss of relationship into something which correlates with the damaged self-concept by rationalising it as having never been a realistic possibility i.e. "I am not worthy of a relationship; should not have fooled myself into believing it was a possibility; therefore the loss was inevitable, even though I didn't foresee it previously". In a way it is the less painful way to deal with things as, although it may appear to some to be an incredibly sad thing- to write yourself and any hope you had off, by negating the thought that the relationship was a genuine chance in the first place, all that is left to deal with is feeling a bit foolish about having believed you had hope in the first place.
or
3b [the rational self?]- challenging the self and potentially risking descending into conflict, depression, and issues which are harder and more complex to resolve- i.e. dealing with the actual loss itself.
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