Listening to: “You Need Me Now?” by girl in red
Reading: Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics by Marc Lamont Hill & Mitchell Plitnick
Watching: Bridge to Terabithia (2007)
Posts from this week:
😴 An essay about being sick and not being able to get real rest
🪩 Photodump of a Midnights inspired self-portrait shoot
They just recently cleared out the field a few houses down from us. It’s just wide open space now, huge and empty and full of possibilities. There’s a big tunnel that leads somewhere dark, and I know it’s probably dangerous and we’d be in big trouble if we went inside it…but we have to go see it.
We take a path on the outer ring of the field to get to school every morning. It’s paved, as if the people who did the bulldozing knew that little kids would be walking through it, using it as both a short-cut and a kingdom. It doesn’t take us very long to get to school now. Just me and my little brother. And the whispers of the woods.
There’s a creek too. It’s right next to a bunch of apartments, but if you close your eyes and pretend a little harder, you’ll see that it’s a place of magic. Rocks in a valley, climbable and dangerous, each moment another chance for us to get found out. For the adults to ask us what exactly we think we’re doing. We hold our breaths.
We walk down the big tunnel. It echoes when you yell. It’s cold, so much colder than the heat of the sun that’s beating down on us when we’re running in the big open field. We try not to make too much noise, afraid something will find us down here. Mom or a monster. We walk careful, worried about what we’ll find, whispering and watching the darkness in front of us. If you walk deep enough, you’ll find water. Or more likely, something wet that most definitely is not water. It’s big, wide enough that you can’t jump it. Wide enough that you definitely shouldn’t try to cross. It could be deep, it seems deep. It feels like the kind of sewage tunnel you’d find in a comic book, where the monsters are lurking down there watching you. We throw a rock in the smooth black liquid, unsure where to go next.
We’re secret agents. On a mission to save the world, dressed in our cargo pants and boots. We have to keep quiet, run so we won’t be seen, hide within the cover of the trees. They’ll find us out, surely. They know we’re here. Where is there to go? Should we venture down the creek to find cover? I hold my finger to my lips, signaling.
I rewatched Bridge to Terabithia this morning. (I know, I’m so brave, etc.) It’s so odd watching films from the 2000s because they used to feel so current and overplayed and relevant, and now they’re artifacts from another time. When teachers on screen scold students about using electronics, the boys put away their Gameboy Advance SPs. When kids play together after school, they aren’t texting their friends or opening their laptops. And when everyone gets dressed, they look like cartoon characters.
I think I’ve watched this movie a dozen times or more since it came out. I remember buying it exclusively on iTunes so I could watch it on my iPod Classic on car rides. As sad as it is, I do count this as one of my comfort movies, and rewatching it now I can see just how much it influenced me during that season of my life.
The thing about Terabithia (as a film, I have yet to read the book it’s based on) is that it’s a very forward-thinking film for 2007. The main character is a young boy who’s from a poor family but whose passion is art and drawing. Not only that, but his best friend is a girl who everyone thinks is unconventional - either because she’s kind of a tomboy or because she’s naturally good at running and construction - and the two of them bond over playing pretend in the woods. The film has a lot of commentary on class, how children from poor families often feel responsible for the family’s finances, how expensive presents from rich friends can be overwhelming. It speaks on gender, especially how gender was being discussed and expressed in the 2000s, how gender-roles and gender-expectations play out among siblings. For a film that’s a children’s film, and especially one that has such a sad storyline, it’s really rich and full of adult themes.
But when I watch this movie, I am transported back to when I was young. I remember the first time I watched this movie when I was twelve and trying to embrace things like make-up, and it struck a chord in me. Why was it so wrong to want to keep being a kid? To keep playing pretend? To want to go explore a magical kingdom in the woods? I saw so much of myself in Leslie and Jess, and at the time I was caught between childhood and young adulthood, and I didn’t know which I was supposed to pick. I was secretly playing Neopets after school, worried that someone would find out and think I was being immature. I tried to let my friends give me make-overs at sleepovers, but ended up bawling when they tried to put eye-liner on me. I didn’t really want to grow up, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice.
When I watch this movie now, I see myself reflected back on the screen. I see the clothes we were all obsessed with in 2007, the music that I downloaded on my 2GB iPod, the dreams I had of drawing and being an artist. I see my parents talking about money, I see my little brother trying to play with me, I see the bus I used to ride every day to school. I see the field a few houses down that we used to play-pretend in for hours. It is a time capsule for a time I never thought I’d miss.
I think we as humans are destined to hate present-day life. There’s always something about our everyday that becomes mundane and boring and annoying all at once. I love modern amenities, and yet I hate this era of streaming music and short videos and chunky sneakers and lord knows what else makes 2024 TWENTY TWENTY FOUR.
I felt the same way about 2007. As much as I loved the way things were, I could feel myself getting bored of the music we played then or the movies that were always running on USA and ABC Family. The world was overrun with Harry Potter and The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls. All I wanted to wear were my Rocketdogs and a hundred layers of tank tops and t-shirts. We shopped at Kohl’s and ate at the mall food court and still tried to get free cookies from Wal-mart. And yet, looking back on it all now, I wish for just a moment I could go back. Because that’s what nostalgia is. You forget the bad parts about the past and just remember the joy you felt at being young. It was thrilling to go to the mall with your best friends because you’d never been there without your mom. It was cool to have a huge fake-snakeskin bag from Claire’s because you could put a bunch of stuff in it. It was fun when you’d go to a party and your friend a big iPod had a bunch of Avril Lavigne downloaded because you could never listen to that whole album at home.
Do I miss the 2000s because I was still a kid or because I miss the way things were back then? Do I miss when the world was a little less overwhelming because technology was different or do I miss that my mom would make me dinner every night?
I’m about six weeks away from turning 29 (an insane sentence), and in truth, I am excited to be this close to thirty. I feel like I’ve been waiting to be thirty year-old Jenna ever since I watched 13 Going on 30 when I was little, and now that we’re almost there, I just feel a growing sense of relief. The more I talk to my younger friends about where they’re at navigating mid/late-twenties, the more happy I am to be almost done with it. Twenties are hard, and the world makes you believe they are the best part of your life, but I think I’m starting to relate to that one quote that I can’t recall about how some women are prettier at 28 than they were at eighteen. (I’m badly paraphrasing…but where did that quote come from?) I feel more like myself than I ever did as a kid, and yet so much of my freedom and inner joy comes from the fact that I’m rediscovering who I was back then. That by reawakening the part of me I left in Terabithia, I’m one step closer to being someone at thirty who I’m proud of.
I’ve been stuck in this apartment for over a week now and tomorrow I get to re-enter society (with a mask). I don’t feel very rested at all. I feel exhausted by my brain, tired from all the crying I’ve been doing, and bored out of my mind. I woke up sore from doing so many self-portrait shoots, and the other day when I went to the lake to get some fresh air, I came home feeling so incredibly weak. I really want to go rock-climbing or do the elliptical, but I’m not supposed to work out for a few weeks post-COVID. I want to do yoga, but my wrists are still acting up. I miss getting to out and eat food in restaurants. I miss talking to my best friend in person. I am tired of being a person and keeping a clean space and cooking food and planning what to do or what to eat. I miss being outside. I miss being on a schedule.
And it sucks because there are people who are chronically ill and immunocompromised who have been dealing with this shit since 2020. I have been stuck for a little over a week, but I will soon be able to “go back to normal” and that’s just so unfair.
I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s one day at a time. Maybe I need to stop watching sad movies or start reading some care-free books. Or maybe I just need to talk to my therapist.