Thank goodness for Veronica Mars.

And thank you Netflix for bringing her to me.

In many ways, she saved my soul.

I had just been through a terrible break-up, and was back living at my mother's house. Break-ups are never a fun experience, but when they end with you sleeping on a futon staring at your mother's doll cabinet, they seem especially cruel.

My boyfriend and I had been living together for a year, and he had become my entire existence. Before I met him, my life was a quiet one--filled with Tuesday nights at the movies and Sunday afternoon marathons of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

It was great having another person in my life, and I missed it as soon as it was gone.

But then I realized something--I missed all that pop culture!

It was a part of me that I really liked, and somehow, I'd been neglecting it--along with my friends and other hobbies I enjoyed.

Hmm, I thought, maybe the relationship wasn't so great after all.

That was when I started catching up on all the good tv I'd been missing, and believe it or not, it got me through the post-break-up blues.

At first, it was hard for me to get out of the futon in the morning, but then I remembered that I wanted to see whether or not Ben on Lost was evil or just misunderstood. When I'd feel sad about having anywhere to go after work, I'd remember that there were brand new episodes of Big Love on my DVR. An entire weekend with no plans whatsoever didn't seem so bad when I had an entire season of Veronica Mars to watch.

By the time I'd made it through my Netflix queue, I was ready to go out in the world again.

I'm sure my healing-through-tv story sounds pretty sad, but believe it or not, even looking back on it, it doesn't seem that way.

Some people lean on faith when they go through a tough time. Some use talents like writing or painting to help express what they're feeling. Some keep their friends on the phone for eight or nine hours at a time (and I may have even done that one night when my DVD players broke). Worse, some people turn to drinking or drugs.

I turned to television.

And I got through it all in pretty good shape.

Who says television is bad for you?