So I have started to spend my not-so-cold but lonely evenings watching Dawson's Creek. Though I try to stay perpetually absorbed in my work as a freelance copywriter, I sometimes find myself with a few spare moments to breathe. Unfortunately, I waste them watching teen dramas like Dawson's Creek and being all-too-introspective for my own good.
So why do I watch Dawson's Creek? There is something about it that reminds me of myself at another time. The emotions, the nondescript Old Navy clothes. It's so 1998. Far closer to the teenage experience I had then some of the shows that are popular today (though don't get me wrong I didn't stumble upon Dawson's Creek until I had already watched all of the modern teen shows through and through).
Back to the question at hand, why is a soon-to-be-30-year-old watching shows about people half her age? ---Oh my god their half my age- I guess the answer to that is that it reminds me of something that I lost and a little bit of something I never had.
For years, I mean YEARS, I had this recurring dream about being in high school and being super stressed. I thought I was the only person who ever had the dream but then I met up with a fellow blogger (ha as though you can call me that) who had the same dream and directed me to her blog about it, "Our Mutual Nightmare." I also found out that a ton of other soon-to-be 30 somethings (or older) were having the same damn dream.
Around the same time that I made this fantastic discovery, I started to watch these goofy teen dramas in the evening while my husband toiled away at Star Trek Online for hours. It wasn't really something I set out the do, as in The Teen Show Project of 2012, but somehow it became a kind of therapy. A way to deal with the crushing loneliness of being married to someone who could not care less. However, it wasn't until I found myself watching Dawson's Creek of all things that it finally hit home. That I finally found something sappy and late-90's post-grunge angst enough to really tap into the iceberg.
See I never watched Dawson's Creek in high school. I was too cool hanging out with my boyfriend and listening to Marilyn Manson CDs. I was too awesomely occupied with being a mall rat. Believe it or not, I am actually OK with that. It would be a hard toss up to determine if Dawson's Creek or Marilyn Manson fueled Mall Ratism is a more embarrassing past.
Well so back to the point, I've been watching a ton of teen shows, like Dawson's Creek, and now suddenly the dreams are starting to dissipate. Like my mind was leading me to watching crappy prime time soap operas about teenagers. Somehow these shows have helped me to tap into emotions and a strength that I forgot existed.
Simultaneously, I have come to some major self-realizations:
1. I am not happy
2. I have foolishly made every decision in my life based on emotion rather than even the slightest bit of logic.
3. Something is happening. Some part of me is transitioning (maybe it is that pending 30th bday) Whatever it is, it's big.
So these strange realization have led me to start blogging again. In college I blogged all friggin day. Back then they were online diaries. I wrote poems and shared songs. I talked a lot about SEX. I was a 19 year old girl who worked as an Assistant Manager at an adult video store and had JUST lost my virginity so everything was blooming around me.
Years passed. Two marriages happened, four kids. College graduation. A recession. A new president.
Somewhere in all that I started to write for other people and stopped writing for myself.
So here I am trying to recover just a little bit of me.
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