I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Most people who know me know this.

I’m told I can be quite boring on the subject.

There are few things that happen where you won’t hear me say "That’s just like Buffy season six" or so on.

The series has been over for a good few years.

So you can’t imagine my happiness when the man behind the show, Joss Whedon, decided to write a comic book which would continue where the series left of.

The day I picked up issue one of that comic I felt a wave of happiness. A wave of complete joy. Buffy was back.

Why is it that I like the series so much?

Well there are a couple of reasons.

The first is that while I was at university. Living with my best friends. Three girls who I hold in my heart as close to me as sisters - we’d all sit down, one night out the week, baited breath for the show to start.

All of us together.

I remember me and my pal Liz grasping for each others hands as Buffy killed Angel in season two, or the four of us laughing together at a particularly dry comment from the slayer.

When I look back at those days I damn myself for not appreciating that time we spent together.

But that’s not the all of the reason I love Buffy.

I left university at the end of season five. Buffy had died. And I wasn’t in a great place mentally. I found it hard getting a job in Brighton. And in the one place I’d started working I was met by a group of people who decided they just didn’t like me very much.

It was important to me to stay in Brighton. To live on my own two feet. I’d taken so much from my parents already. I wanted to make them proud of me by living my own life. And more to the point I wanted my own life. I was 21 and I’d just started to find my own voice. And I didn’t want to talk with that voice. I wanted to scream, to shout, to sing - to be my own person.

But, I lost my job. Inevitable because with so many of my colleagues being so horrid I didn’t really enjoy it. I did my best. But they didn’t like me and because of that I didn’t like being there.

I fell out with my new set of housemates.

And so I went back to Croydon. Tail between my legs. A failure.

My wonderful, patient, loving parents excepted me back with open arms. But I don’t think they ever understood the sense of loss I felt. I wanted to be my own man and I failed.

The truth is when I returned to Croydon I was properly depressed. For a good two weeks I didn’t want to get out of bed.

And my wonderful parents did their best to support me. Showed me nothing but love. But I felt that I’d failed. Failed myself and failed them.

I would say, in true melodrama that I wanted to die, but it wouldn’t be the truth. I was so down I couldn’t bothered whether I lived or died. I couldn’t be bothered if the sun came up the next day. So depressed was I that if Simply Red came on the radio I didn’t have the energy to change the dial.

Thankfully though my mum bought the season six box-set of Buffy.

And as I watched her. Buffy. Back from the dead. Torn out of heaven. Down, depressed, just like me I made a choice. If she can do it. Keep living. So can I.

Don’t get me wrong. I know she’s a fictional character. But spending so long so down you forget how to empathise. But while I was watching the show I reminded me of my three good friends. My Scooby Gang. That front room. Those laughs. It reminded me that life wasn’t that bad.

And then I began to think that if Buffy could save the world, go to heaven, come back and still keep fighting the good fight then so could I.

In my head I began to pretend I was her. That I was fighting evil. That I was saving the world. That I mattered to the world.

And eventually as I did that the world became a better place. And there was less evil. And I eventually became happy. And I found that voice again.

I love Buffy because the show shows how one girl can change the world. She certainly changed mine.

"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. So live in it."