Kelly Lawler

USA TODAY

The following contains spoilers for a TV show that aired its series finale two years ago, just FYI.

Two years ago today, millions of viewers tuned in one last time to at long last discover how Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) met the mother of his children.

But over the course of How I Met Your Mother’s highly anticipated series finale, that titular mother, who fans had been waiting for for nine years, ends up dying young of an unspecified disease, and Ted, in middle-age, rekindles a romance with his incompatible ex from the start of the show: Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders).

The show aired a series finale that went down in television history, but surely not in the way that its creators intended. The decisions to minimize the woman the show spent nine seasons teasing and deny Ted the happy ending he (and we) had been pining for, coupled with unceremoniously ending the marriage between Robin and fan-favorite Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) outraged many fans. What exactlywas the point of the entire show then?

I’m not sure what the point of it was, but I do know one thing: It’s been two years, and I’m still not over it. And the more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that I’m never going to get over it.

When the finale aired there was an outcry from fans and critics alike. I was one of them. How? How was it possible that this show -- one that I had invested a significant portion of my life in, watching episodes faithfully every Monday night on CBS since it debuted in 2005 -- hurt me so much? Because I did feel hurt. When you have such a time and emotional investment in a show, it’s hard not to feel downright betrayed when the show doesn't go in a consistent, satisfying and quality direction.

HIMYM does not exist to please me. No show or movie is held solely accountable to where its fans want it to go. But the problem wasn’t that it betrayed me or any other loyal fan, but that it betrayed itself. In the universe of the show, Robin and Ted ending up together felt wrong. There were nine seasons of proof as to why those two were never meant to be a couple. The show worked very hard to convince us of that fact, while simultaneously asking the audience to root for Robin and Barney (we mean, the entire ninth season took place over their wedding weekend). So when the mother was ripped away from Ted and Robin was ripped away from Barney, the audience got whiplash.

Other shows that have gone out on a sour note (cough Seinfeld cough Lost cough), have not tarnished the episodes that came before them. You may not have been on board with the whole purgatory thing on Lost, but that doesn't take away from the action or emotion of an exceptional episode, like season four’s "The Constant.” But the fact that the mother ends up being such a footnote in Ted’s life does change the way you watch something like the show’s season four finale, “The Leap,” which suggests that a bad year in the protagonist’s life will soon be righted by the appearance of his true love. But according to the finale, his true love was sitting next to him in that MacLaren’s booth the whole time.

I’ll also admit that I’m bitter. I’m bitter because I hung on to HIMYM through its disappointing final seasons simply because the promise of the mother kept me going. I’m bitter because the show’s unwavering positivity was such a welcome lift in my life when I needed it, and it upended its years-long faith in happy ever after in one hour. I’m bitter because I can’t re-watch my favorite episodes anymore, the same way you can’t go back to your childhood home after someone else has moved in there. It’s the same, but it’s all wrong.

An alternate ending on a DVD box set doesn’t change things, and in fact nothing in the past two years has changed the way I felt watching this episode live, mouth open in disbelief. And apparently, nothing will.