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I didn't choose this life. You know that, right? I mean, everyone knows the story. "One girl in all the world, born with the strength and skill, etc." That girl didn't get a choice in the matter. She didn't get to decide that it wasn't her fault, and that the evil should go bother someone else. She didn't get to pick and choose her fights, or rely on someone else to play backup. She was Chosen, and she never, ever had any idea why. That's the way the story goes.
Actually, that's the way the story went. It's different now: the choice is yours.
Lesson One: Make a choice.
I'm making it that simple! I quit! I resign, I'm fired. You can find someone else to stop the Master from taking over!...Giles, I'm sixteen years old. I don't want to die.
-- Prophecy Girl
I'm supposed to teach you something about being a Slayer, so here's the most important thing I've learned: you have to make a choice.
See, the whole problem about being a Slayer is that you become used to dealing with someone else making the choices for you. You've probably been told -- as I was -- that you have a sacred duty, a destiny to fight the forces of evil. You probably want to know who gave you that destiny, who decided that you should be the one to carry these burdens. Well, you know what? It doesn't matter. In the end, it doesn't really make the slightest bit of difference which mystical Power is up there pulling the strings. We play the hand we've been dealt. Don't waste time trying to figure out the whys, because you'll never have an answer that makes sense. The important question is: what are you going to do now?
The way I see it, being chosen as a Slayer is like winning a lottery that you don't remember entering. Kind of a sucky lottery, what with the constant mortal danger and world save-age, but it has its benefits. (For one thing, there'll never be a jar you can't open.) And if you win the lottery, the worst thing you can do with your money is...nothing. You can give it away to someone, you can keep it and save it, you can blow it all on the world's best shoe-shopping spree, but if you don't make a choice about what to do with it, it's like not winning anything at all. Maybe you really didn't want to win, but that doesn't matter. You did, and now it's up to you to decide what to do.
If anyone ever tells you that facing death gets easier, they're lying. I should know. And the actual dying part? That's a whole other realm of badness. Eventually we're all going to die, and there's nothing you can do about that. But you can make the decision to go out to meet it, or you can wait for death to come for you. There are some things in life we can't control, but the important thing is to make the choices you can. Choose to fight, or choose to say, "No, thanks," and go off and try to live your own life. I've done both. But if you wait around and let someone else -- your friends, your Watcher, the Powers -- make that choice for you, you'll never be free.
Lesson Two: Life is more complex than you think.
Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate, who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get.
-- Lie to Me
When I started out as a Slayer, everything seemed so simple. There are good guys and there are bad guys, and the bad guys all have fangs or bumps or smell really bad. The bad guys try to eat you, you cut their heads off, you party. Easy, right?
Except that it's never quite that simple. You know that the only good vampire is a dusty vampire, and then you meet one who has a soul. You know for a fact that no one can love without a soul, and then you meet someone who does exactly that. You know that it's your job to protect innocent humans from the evil demons, except that sometimes the humans are more brutal and vicious than any demon you've ever met. You develop fuzzy feelings for the wrong guy, and then you wind up in a world where human monsters kill your friend and evil vampires get their souls because they love you, and nothing makes sense any more.
At this point, the only thing I know for sure is that I don't have all the answers. Life will always surprise you. Sometimes the people you trust most will be the ones to betray you. Slayers have a sacred duty to protect humanity, but that doesn't mean that all humans are innocent. And as soon as you think you've got it all figured out, life will come along and kick you in the teeth.
I've made plenty of mistakes along the way, and I'm sure I'll do so again in the future. You will too. I know that there's nothing more annoying than someone telling you not to blame yourself, so I won't. You will blame yourself, because that's what the person with the power does. Not to get all Spiderman about it, but with great power comes great responsibility. Being the Slayer can have some cool bonuses, but it doesn't come with infallibility. Sometimes you'll make the wrong choice, and sometimes it will seem that there isn't a right choice to make. I don't have any easy answers for you.
Lesson Three: It never ends.
I'm never getting out of here. I kept thinking if I stopped the Mayor, or...but I was kidding myself. I mean, there is always going to be something. I'm a Sunnydale girl, no other choice.
-- Choices
There's one thing about a Slayer's life that no one thinks to warn you about, and it's not the long hours and bad pay. It's the tedium.
Evil doesn't take Christmas off (although sometimes there's this thing about Halloween which I've never really figured out). It doesn't care if you've got the world's most important date lined up. It won't give you a break because you're tired, or hungry, or have a French test tomorrow. It will keep coming until you're beyond exhausted, and just when you feel like you can't take any more, it'll throw a nice little apocalypse your way.
I don't want to scare you, but that's just the way it is. And here's the thing about fighting evil: you get used to it. No matter how bad and creepy and weird it gets, it will start to feel strangely normal. It just keeps coming, and no matter how prepared you think you are, eventually you feel like the life has been sucked out of you and the only thing left is the job. That's the most dangerous feeling of all. Tired and complacent is a bad combination, because you get sloppy.
Someone once told me that every Slayer has a death wish, and that the monsters out there are just waiting for their one good day: the day when your concentration slips, the day when you're too tired to go on, the day when you finally feel like giving up.
I wish I could tell you that he was wrong.
Lesson Four: It's all about balance.
I come from a long line of fry cooks that don't live past twenty-five.
-- Doomed
Finding out that I was the Slayer was hard. Learning how to fit that into my life was almost impossible.
For years, I felt split down the middle. On the one side was the Slayer: the fighter, the killer, the one who came home covered in blood and slime. On the other side was the girl: the one who just wanted to hang out with her friends, meet a nice guy, and go off to college one day. When I learned I was the Slayer, it was like my life had been put on hold. The Slayer parts came first, and as time passed, it felt like the Buffy parts just got squeezed in around the edges. I was starting to feel like I was two people in one body. Even worse, I was starting to feel like all of the Slayer stuff had ruined my chance at a normal life.
Here's something I figured out: there's no such thing as a normal life. The hot guy in high school turns out to be an immortal vampire. The nice college guy turns out to be a genetically engineered demon fighter. (Oh, and by the way, the whole vampire thing? That was a really, really special case. Two special cases, actually. It rarely ends well, even when they're not trying to kill you. Just, you know, a word to the wise. And those two special cases I talked about? Don't even think about it. Totally off limits.) I thought I was cursed to never have a normal relationship, and then I took a look around me. No one's ever in a normal relationship, even when you're not dating a werewolf, a witch or an ex-vengeance demon.
If you're putting your life on hold, if you're holding out for the perfect amount of normal, if you're waiting until your life is settled to actually live your life...well, you'll be waiting until the day you die. You're not two people, and the sooner you figure that out the happier you'll be. I'm just me: all Slayer, all girl, and all Buffy.
Lesson Five: Love.
I love you. I will *always* love you. But this is the work that I have to do. Tell Giles...tell Giles I figured it out. And, and I'm okay.
-- The Gift
Giles wanted me to talk about the time I had a vision quest and saw the First Slayer. I've tried all week to find a way to describe what I saw, but...the words just aren't coming. Besides, I think that maybe that message was just for me.
But here's something I can tell you: don't be afraid to love, because this is where your strength comes from. It's hard, and it's dangerous, and you may end up losing yourself, but it will give you the power to do the impossible. You're going to lose people you love, and it will suck beyond the telling of it. I wish I could tell you that it gets easier with time, but it doesn't. I know that it feels like it'll be easier if you can just lock yourself away, but that's not the answer. If you cut yourself off from that hurt, you become less than human.
It's not just about loving another person. As a Slayer, you have a special job: you have to love the world, enough to live for it and, if necessary, die for it. And the only way you can love the world that much is if you live in it. If you cut yourself off, if you make yourself so hard that nothing can hurt you, you lose your greatest weapon. Losing someone you love is the hardest thing imaginable, and it doesn't matter it was because they were sick, or because you had to save the world, or because it was their time to be a champion. Each time it happens, you feel like you've lost a part of your soul. But then time passes, and you realize that you're still you, and that the people you lost are still a part of you. And in the end, you're even stronger than you were to begin with.
So let yourself love. Let yourself be a part of the world, because that's the only way you'll be strong enough to save it.
Lesson Six: Forgive.
Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch...this is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost...
-- After Life
Sometimes you'll make mistakes. Sometimes you'll fail. Sometimes you'll hurt the people you love, or they will hurt you. Sometimes it will be all your fault, and sometimes it will totally be somebody else's fault.
And sometimes, you just have to stop dwelling on things and just let the past be the past.
Which is worse: feeling betrayed by your friends, or knowing that you're the one who hurt them? I think it's worse knowing that you've hurt someone you care about. And here's the thing: before you can really forgive someone else, you have to learn how to forgive yourself. Easier said than done, right? How can you face the darkness inside you and look yourself in the mirror afterwards?
We've all done horrible things in our lives, and because we're Slayers, it seems like our mistakes are bigger than anyone else's. Sometimes they are. When we mess up, lives can be lost. But at the same time, we're still human, and we're not perfect. I've heard rumors about this supposed Slayer superiority complex, not that I really know about that firsthand, or anything. But because we have so much strength, we can be tempted to think that our mistakes are unforgivable. Kind of arrogant, isn't it, to think that even our faults are larger than life? I don't know about you, but the blame game gets tired. Sometimes it's simply time to move on. When you allow yourself to forgive someone else and be forgiven in turn, you've created an unbreakable bond with them.
Lesson Seven: Give.
In every generation, one slayer is born... because a bunch of men who died thousands of years ago made up that rule....So I say we change the rule. I say my power should be our power.
-- Chosen
I used to think that the Slayer was just a killer, but I realized that that's only the tiniest part of who we are. Maybe that's the way things used to be, but not anymore. We've made a change, all of us. See, it used to be the job of the Council to prepare us for what was out there. But in reality, the Slayer was always the one with the power. And get this: we have the power to build, not just destroy. We can be the ones to pass on our knowledge. We can help each other. We can give.
It'll be hard. I don't think Slayers were meant to come in herds -- take my word for it, it's hard enough having two at a time, let alone dozens. We're going against the natural order of things. But in the end, it doesn't really matter what the natural order is, or what we were meant to do. This is what we are, and we have the strength to live with it.
So there you have it. It's been hinted to me, by a certain sister who shall remain nameless, that inspirational speeches are not really my strong suit. Color me shocked. And honestly, I'd rather take on a nest of vamps any day of the week. Still, I hope that maybe there will be a little something in here that you can relate to -- maybe not now, but down the road at some point. I've fought, and I've lost, and I've learned, and I want to share that with you. After all, we're a family now.
Here endeth the lessons.
[Editor's note: Transcription performed by R. Giles, 12 April 2006. No changes have been made to the original work.]