Pop culture is everywhere. It's the music we listen to, the books we read, and the fictional characters we print on our body pillows. And I'm deeply fascinated by it, which led to my current career in which I attempt to shout over the whirlpool of the internet about why my opinions about Superman are the best ones. I also kind of owe everything to pop culture -- not just because it pays my rent, but also because it saved my life at two points.

When I say that pop culture saved my life, I don't mean in the sense of "He told me he'd shoot me unless I listed my top five Rolling Stones albums." See, I've battled with depression for a long time. A longer time than any actual amount of years that I can mark it, as depression has a tendency to spread itself out across your life, so that you're not quite sure of what it was like before a mixture of sadness, anxiety, and hopelessness draped itself upon you like a pile of wet sweaters. Pop culture saved my life because, at those two points of my life, it was all I had.

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When I was a sophomore in college, all of the things that I'd once thought were definite about myself seemed to dissipate. I was in the middle of an on-again, off-again long-distance relationship, and surprisingly enough, "Hours away and breaking up all the time" isn't the best recipe for romance. It was one of those relationships where you actually feel lonelier when you get off the phone with them because rather than be excited that you got to talk to the person you care about, all you can think is "What did they mean by that? Why would they say that to me? Do they know how words work?"