My First Heartbreak: Firestar

Warning: sappy content herein.



From 1981-1983, NBC Saturday Morning aired an animated show Spiderman and His Amazing Friends. I was five or six at the time, but I loved it: Spidey was always a quick-quipping badass, Iceman was, well, he made fucking ice out of his hands, and then there was Firestar. *le sigh*

I was absolutely head over heels in love with Firestar. I was many years away from feelings of sexual attraction, but somehow felt such a desire, such an affinity towards the character, that it made a lasting impression on me, even at such a young age.

I specifically remember my father - working for the local NBC affiliate at the time - brought home a 5x7 promo glossy of the three heroes sliding / slinging / flying in action. And me: just staring at Firestar, alone in my room, until my emotive threshold met up with my realism that she was a cartoon and the awesome adoration exuding from my eyes turned to tears as I truly realized I would never be able to experience her beauty/persona personally. I cried myself to sleep that night.

Firestar had broken my heart.

And it's probably 90% of the reason I have a thing for redheads.

And I look back on that as a magical time of sorts, because at its core, it was pure, not an overwhelming desire to possess, but just to know more, comprehend more. And a despair that came with the inability.

Years later, I still see a little bit of that pull to know an inner beauty in every person I meet, though it only gets intense enough to tear up when I stare at the clouds or the Hubble Deep Field.

Beauty is in everything. And, in a sense, love is too. And I think I'm concluding that a cartoon character opened my mind to both and handed me the tools to appreciate them at just the right age to become the person I am today.