I'm not really sure where to start, but I guess at the beginning would be best.

I found Sherlock about two years ago after the Fall, and I ignored it.  Couldn't get into it and at the time I wasn't interested in anything.  Last year around this time, I was suicidal and commited several times into hospital for crisis care.  During the spring I had no friends, no family and I moved to a new town and didn't know anyone.  I decided to watch Sherlock again on netflix and holy shit did my perspective change.  I've always been a Sherlock fan, I've read the books in grade school, Mouse Detective, HOUSE MD, RDJ Sherlock - BBC Sherlock was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Now, I've been very careful how I've tried explaining this because people don't believe me.  Sherlock is such a fantastical character, people often tell me it's impossible to relate to him in any way.  The problem is, I relate to him in a very real way.  People often don't like me because I rub them the wrong way, I don't do it on purpose, I just ... I have very little patience for people who say and do stupid things.  I'm not a genius in ANY sort of way, in fact, I dare call myself a bit slow.  It doesn't stop me from trying to pay attention and try to make sense of things, ask questions, get things wrong - at least I try!  That's what annoys me the most.  Sherlock gives credit for people trying, he appreciate intelligence in others in his own way (asks advice on who considers experts in their genre), but very few people can appreciate him.

I can personally relate to his boredom, always have to have something to do.  I have Borderline Personality Disorder, BiPolar AND I have Aspergers.  Boredom for me is a very serious problem.  I have done a lot of crazy things because I was bored, like learning HTML/CSS when I was 13 (I'm 26 now, and I learned through decoding websites, not tutorials), advanced mathematics and physics, computer programming, and just about anything else I could get my hands on that I thought was interesting.  People often have a hard time talking to me because they can't appreciate how my mind works, and when I tell them what I know, they unknowingly insult it.  They try to act like their clever (I'm not a clever person... just well read), or challenge me at something I have little knowledge about, or tell me to do something useful.  They don't see me for who I am and it goes over everyones head.  It's frusterating and it's lead for people to believe I can be a very cold person.

When I watched the show, I fell in love with it.  It gave my brain something to do, I would pick it apart, try to catch little things to make sense of the ending.  I had a thousand theories (although I never shared them because most have been said), and its just such a fun celebral show.  Of course I also ended up falling in love with Sherlock, as the character not Benedict, himself.  That by the way, is annoying when that happens.  Falling in love with a character is brutal but in your mind and emotion it's real, so I've just sorta accepted it and left it at that.  Season 3 came out (no spoilers) and it happened again, and now I'm back to being ruined for men.  Just as well, the last guy I spoke to was an idiot and my tongue was a bit sharper than I thought. 

Every now and then, I can see Sherlock's perspective on how he views things, just a glimpse of his genius.  It's caused me a couple of migraines when I try to focus on it too much.  Again, no spoilers, the wedding was a big one.

The biggest problem I have is how obessed I am with this show.  It's literally taken over my life.  I can't shut up about it right now, Series 3 has taken over my thought processes.  My music tastes have changed dramatically, so has my wardrobe.  I've taken a liking to wearing scarves - I've even got a beautiful blue casmere and silk one for Christmas.  I warn people not to mention Sherlock if they haven't seen any of the new episodes (if any at all), and if they do watch it - be very careful because I will go on tangants.  My social skills have taken a small nose dive, but luckily for me - my dad was the same way about Star Trek and my younger brother is Ninja Turtles and comic books - so being an obessed nerd runs in the family.  My mom face palms a lot during the holidays when we're together.

Of course, there's good things too.  I've learned the memory technique.  Took me a few months to build, but it's come in handy for a lot of things.  I have so many subjects, it's nice to know that I can recall on them when I need to if I don't have the option of looking them up.  I live in the moment, and for a very long time that was impossible for me.  Sherlock rarely gets anxeity over anything, and it's not just because he 's smart enough to solve any problem that he comes up against.  He lives in the now, prepares for the future, and uses the past.  It helped me over come my anxeity and depression. Helped me discover who I was as a person, and not worry about what people thought about me.  I learned to appreciate what was around me, live in the now, not worry about tomorrow or yesterday.  I started getting out more - volunteering my time at the library and local church (not religious, just needed community).  I learned that just because I was hard to get along with, doesn't mean that people can't love me, and I can't love them. 

I did the opposite of Sherlock and went seeking for community.  I didn't want to be alone.  I knew making friends would be very difficult, but I didn't put my mindset to that.  I started doing things that I loved.  Wondering how I could put my knoweldge into use.  I even found myself a flatmate who, bless his heart, has a lot of patience with me.  He currently went to his girlfriends house for the weekend to AVOID the last episode of season 3.  Avoiding spoilers - but mostly avoiding me because I am going to be an absolute train wreck of emotion and livid deductions and pulling everything apart.  He even went so far as to make sure I remembered to eat while he was gone (put a sticky note on my tea pot that he left me leftovers because he knew I wouldn't remember). He's even learned how to avoid me talking about Sherlock by getting me into a subject we're both good at. He will tease me though, get me on a tangant because it amuses him, but it's not malicious.  

This is what I mean though, by having it take over my life.  Without it though, I wouldn't be here. It gave me something to look forward to.  The huge hiatus made me WANT to keep going.  It gave me a goal!  Knowing about the actors, and who they were and the work they've done - kept me going.  I began to look forward to watching them in other places.  Being IN the fandom, and connecting to hundereds of other fans, and talking to them, has kept me going.  Knowing how Benedict felt when he went from a nobody to a super star in a matter of a year - gave me hope.  It changed who I was so drastically, so immensely, I'll never be the same again.  I no longer fear challenges.  I no longer look at the mirror and despise what I see.

I just wanted to find others who might understand what I'm talking about when I talk about Sherlock.  I'm looking back at this going "what the frick frak" because I don't know how to shut up.  SORRY!

Cheers...
*runs away*