Never Doesn’t Always Mean Never
I discovered one of my first positive obsessions when I was seven years old - and shortly after, I found out that it would be one of those things I had to keep to myself.
I first became interested in LEGO Bionicles when I was seven, the year they were released in the US. Instead of building a town or car out of LEGOs, these new kits let you build characters that were part of a fantasy adventure story I got to read in comic books I received every month. My old copies of the comics are torn and taped together from the amount of times I read them, and every time a new issue came, I couldn’t wait to dive in headfirst.
I’m pretty sure my parents were confused when I started playing with my new Bionicle figures together with Barbie dolls, making up stories for them together, and my interest in them quickly eclipsed everything else.
The problem was, I didn’t know anyone else who wanted to talk about them. It wasn’t just that people weren’t interested - they were actively disinterested, even to the point where I felt like I couldn’t bring up basic facts about my favorite characters without being treated like I was some sort of freak. The combination of an incredibly strong interest - and the fad being “for boys” - made me feel like no one would ever care about something I loved so much.
My parents and therapist encouraged me to keep my interest in Bionicles at home so I could avoid getting picked on. My parents bought me the toys and supported my passion behind closed doors, but I always wanted something I thought was impossible - a discussion with a friend where we share a mutual interest.
I thought I’d never be able to tell anyone that out of the six main characters, my favorite was Gali. Not just because she was a female superhero, but that she was one who wasn’t pink, designed to look sexy, or always coming in second place to the boys. I thought I’d never be able to tell a friend that Gali had awesome water powers, was a respected and powerful leader who doubled as a great mediator, and her second-in-command’s name was the same as my Hebrew name.
This week, I proved that “never” just meant I’d have to wait a couple of decades before having the conversation I longed for as a child.
I was playing Splatoon 3, a newly released online multiplayer game, with some people I knew well and others I didn’t know as well. We were all in a voice chat together, and while playing the game, one of our characters (who are based on various forms of marine life) turned into a crab. It struck me that the crab looked very similar to Bionicle’s Ussal crabs, my favorite creatures in the world because of how cute and resourceful they were.
Before I could remember to censor myself, I told the group that the crab character looked like a Bionicle crab. I had a moment of regret, but then realized that these were online friends, and if they decided off my one remark that I was weird, I didn’t really want to be hanging out with them anyway.
Much to my surprise, someone who I’d only spoken to once or twice immediately piped up, exclaiming that he’d noticed the resemblance to Ussal crabs too.
I immediately got so excited! After so long of having to hide various interests, I was thrilled to finally meet someone who I wouldn’t be inflicting my interest on.
I asked him who his favorite character was, and learned from him why he enjoyed one of the other heroes so much. And then he asked me about my favorite, and the two of us went off on a tangent that no one else quite understood, but felt like validation for me after so long of wanting to have such a basic thing of people showing interest in my hobbies.
My therapist calls this phenomenon a “corrective experience.” She says it’s things like this that show me that some of my childhood beliefs are faulty - it’s not that no one is interested in my interests, it’s just that I have to be patient and find the right people. It’s a good way to break out of my usual black-and-white thinking and the experience affirmed for me that even if my childhood interests weren’t the same as what most people my age cared about, I still deserved to be heard and finally getting that made me just as happy as I always imagined it would.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.