The first time I drove alone I was on the way to my sixteenth birthday party. The entire time, my hands were stuck at ten and two as I went precisely the speed limit, navigating the streets I'd seen from passenger seats my whole life. I had organized a beach picnic for my friends and I; it was mid-September, and the weather was warm, the sky clear. The front windows were cracked carefully, just enough so I could feel the breeze on my face which inevitably brought in the scent of gasoline and never that of the ocean. As the smell mixed with suntan lotion, my mind wandered to scenes from the summer that was now coming to a close, just as it had done every year. Though this time, it was different. There was a new sense of finality. Like I couldn't ever have it back.
I have an obsession with nostalgia that overwhelms me, an unavoidable urge to run around trying my hardest to grab hold of my memories and relive them all at once. To never let them go. More often than not, this leaves me a spectator in my own life. My rose-colored glasses are permanently affixed to my eyes whenever I look back on old photos, old playlists, journals, school projects—anything that holds a piece of who I used to be. When I was younger, I would have been repulsed at the thought of calling myself a romantic—romance was gross and I was above all that—but I think the title fits. Call it an “old soul” or inescapable pessimism, but my whole life I have been nostalgic for times that haven’t yet come.
In middle school, I watched movies like The Edge of Seventeen and The Perks of Being a Wallflower and wished that I could be what those characters were, that sepia-toned teenage experience. I wanted to bike in the street with Nadine and drive through the tunnel with Sam, Charlie, and Patrick. Popular culture shares this obsession. Studios like A24 capitalize on people like me and their need to drink in every moment of adolescence so that they can analyze it later on with the fervor of a mad scientist. The audience these studios cater to has either yet to experience these moments of adolescence or has just left them behind. They can never see themselves in these films, so why are they so obsessed with them?
For me, I used these movies as ways to experience a life I felt robbed of during the height of the pandemic. Despite being thirteen, I was convinced that chance to live the life I watched and read about was taken away; only later would I learn that it's impossible to live like that without a driver's license. During this period, I was consumed by scouring the internet for tastes of the bildungsroman experience. I read archives of old magazines like Rookie and listened to Garden Song by Phoebe Bridgers while I went on my family's COVID walks. Looking back, I recognize this year as the inciting incident behind my romanticism and obsession with both the past and things yet to happen.
Whether I like it or not, my adolescence will forever be characterized by COVID-19 and all that has followed. As my peers and I enter our senior year, the pressing question of college looms over our heads. While we strive for the so-called “school of our choice,” many of us still have yet to fully live up to those scenes in movies, with their romantic soundtracks and dreamy cinematography. Many of us never will. Many of us will never stop trying.
There's a scene in the movie Lady Bird where the titular character drives alone through Sacramento for the first time just before she leaves for college. Though she spends the duration of the film doing her best to get away from the city, there is such profound emotion at this moment when she realizes the beauty in her surroundings. Never quite appreciating it, Ladybird spent her whole life in this city without recognizing its unique charms. The beauty of her situation evades her, as it often does, up until it is too late. When I drove alone for the first time, down through Second Street and Belmont Shore, the same route my mom took when she dropped me off at junior lifeguards summer after summer, I felt a strange melancholy fill my being. The sun was setting, everything looked hazy and golden, and despite my youth, I had never felt so old. In a brief moment of clarity, I realized that Landslide was playing. I remember laughing because it was as if my playlist knew what was happening, because what song could be more perfect?
Moments like this are what I and all others who live life in search of the picturesque live and breathe for. For a moment I was one of the teens in the movies I’d seen a thousand times before. These occurrences don't exist in the vacuum of a movie studio, anyone can live them, but you must be willing to relinquish yourself from the hold of what has or has yet to happen and look at the world around you.
Memories are made in the exact moments when you aren't trying, whether alone or with the people you love, in the most mundane of places you can find moments worth cherishing. More often than not, those are the ones that last a lifetime.
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Rose Garcia is a Junior in the WAVE pathway who has been an avid reader her whole life. After encouragement from her peers, she began writing stories of her own. Rose can be found in a far-off corner with her headphones and a book. She hopes to pursue a career as an Editor in the future.
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