Comics have always been in the back of my mind. I started watching cartoons like “Young Justice,” “X-Men Evolution,” “Teen Titans,” and other spinoffs of the comics when I was a young girl.

Recently, I got back into Marvel and started watching all the shows on Disney+. I really wanted to watch the “Loki” series, but I told myself I would wait until I watched all the movies in order before starting it. But alas, my impatient butt couldn’t wait. I watched “Endgame” and other movies for the first time, and I was off from there.

Loki has been my favorite character since I was ever fully into the Marvel fandom, and watching the series made me like him 10 times more.

Shortly after I watched the “Loki” series, I pulled out my old original character for Marvel, originally part of the X-Men, and revamped her look and fleshed out her backstory a lot more. I gave her a name that represented her powers, metal manipulation and a small amount of other mind-related powers, and I, of course, made her Loki’s love interest. The first ever fan fiction I wrote with her in it is called “Avengers Stuff” based on a prompt I saw a TikTok creator make, and I still have it saved in my Google Drive. It was about what happened when she, spoilers, used the Infinity Gauntlet instead of Iron Man. So it was really sad. I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day, but we’ll see. I poured so many hours into creating her and Loki’s relationship and writing out her relationships with other characters, I couldn’t even tell you what my word count is with stories of her.

I don’t know what it was about Loki that drew me in so quickly and caused me to get attached so easily. Of course, Tom Hiddleston is super talented. The way he portrays the trickster is something I won’t soon forget.

That is, I didn’t know until now.

Slowly, but surely, I’ve been starting to realize that I put a lot of my feelings of grief into the characters I create and I think Jade was subconsciously heavily influenced by my feelings of grief. I put all of the things I wish I said into her, all of my hurt feelings, and all of the wishing that they’d come back into her character arc after the events of “Infinity War” and “Endgame.” All of the hurt I was feeling in losing someone I put into her feelings toward losing Loki in the way she did. In my latest fan fiction, I even gave her someone to blame in the form of “The Eternals.”

Let’s face it. Loki’s death wasn’t pretty. The more and more people point out things about that particular scene, the more it hits home. The way he looks at Thor, the way Thor could only watch as his brother was killed without even screaming, his last words to Loki, which were “you truly are the worst brother” or some other variation, and the way grief completely took over Thor.

That’s kind of what it did to me.

I stopped caring for myself, I gained weight, and I couldn’t seem to bring my emotions down as the waves and waves of grief and regret and guilt and anger kept hitting me at alarming rates. I did things to the detriment of my own health that I shouldn’t have done, such as forgetting to refill my medicine for weeks on end and not eating right and not drinking enough water.

However, I think I see myself the most in Loki.

He doesn’t show his emotions to people and tries to put on a brave face to prove to the world that he is invincible when that couldn’t be further from the truth. He, like everyone else, reaches his breaking point and when he manages to escape from Mobius and sits in that amphitheater by himself and sees what happens in his life and starts crying…that’s something I resonate with.

I don’t let people know that I’m grieving. I do it late at night when no one can hear me crying. I go to bathrooms and stairwells to hide my tears and the sadness in my eyes and the heart-wrenching pain I’m feeling. If no one but my family sees and no one sees anything on social media, no one will know. The facade can keep going that I’ve got a perfect life and I’m always smiling.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve hidden my emotions. In high school, when I went through my first serious phase of depression and anxiety, no one knew except for a select few people who saw me go through it. Crying every night I was away from my family, not knowing if the world was real or not, feeling so anxious and so depressed that I couldn’t sleep. That’s a lot for a high schooler to go through. I even asked my closest friends if they knew that I was depressed in high school and they told me they couldn’t even tell. I kept it all a secret.

In the “Loki” series, we see how Loki slowly begins to trust people like Mobius and Sylvie and truly open up to them and show them true vulnerability in the form of hugs and kisses and shed tears, and I think that’s what I like so much about it. It allows us to see a character we see as this strong, stoic, deeply damaged person and see them as a person with true feelings even if we, the viewers, are only privy to the moments when he’s grieving. Though he’s a god, we’re able to relate to him and see him as a human being.

Soon after getting into Marvel and following Loki’s story, I started to slowly feel better. I had an outlet in my writing and in my characters. My thoughts became clearer and I made a few good decisions that impacted my life for the better. And I realized things that I wouldn’t have realized when I was weighed down by all the emotions I was feeling. Instead of calling up my parents crying every week, the times where I was crying became less frequent and my emotions became less intense.

Of course, there are still things that trigger those feelings of grief such as songs, mentions of certain things, or when I become so stressed that how unfair the world is is all I can think of. It’s the normal process of grieving.

People have pointed out that Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has to do a lot with grief, so maybe that’s why I felt so connected to the series and movies. You could say it came at the right time. I am going to be forever thankful for these shows and Loki for the light they brought back into my life.

Now if only Tom Hiddleston knew that.

Alyssa Ochss is the page designer at The Alpena News. She graduated from Oakland University and loves pop culture and all things nerd. You can reach her at aochss@thealpenanews.com.