Sunday, April 14, 2013

The times they are a changin'

It's strange and weird and fascinating to think about how much of ourselves has been defined by pop culture. I was thinking about this the other day, when I saw my friend Annie, with whom I have been friends for a really long time and who is attending a boarding school in England.
For those of you who don't know this about me, and who care (which you seriously should not feel obligated to), I have had a pretty global education, attending schools of three different educational systems, here in Madrid and in the US. I am obviously super duper extra lucky to have had this opportunity, and I will never be thankful enough to my parents, but it also has its downsides sometimes as you usually find yourself missing a person who is very far away, your family, your group of friends or even just a place in particular. That sucks, duh. It sucked really badly last year when I was far away from home and my amazing group of friends that I kind of relied on a lot when I was at home, and I saw this group of friends growing farther apart from one another and I kept feeling how powerless I was being so far away from them and the situation in general. I was really worried about this for a while, since I had to come back home and I just didn't feel like my friends, as a whole, would be there to welcome me.
Obviously, that was last year and thankfully I am still here, rambling about my life on this blog, so it wasn't that big of a deal. However, a lot of things did change last year, I changed, my friends changed, I feel like the overall of my life changed suddenly. I started in a new school, but most of my friends from that group that was falling apart were moving out of Madrid just as I returned. There's still a few of us scattered here in Madrid, but we knew things weren't going back to normal.
Annie (remember that first paragraph hehehe) and I have known each other since we were about 6/7 years  old, and we have stayed friends, sometimes closer sometimes not so much, since then. I was really excited when she called me to meet up this easter vacation, and it turned out we were going to the same place afterwards so that was also nice, 'cause it meant we were going to do some extremely needed catching up. Annie, as I guess I am too, is starting to look at universities and applying to them and stuff, and she told me her first choice was this Ivy in Connecticut.
This brought me back to when I was about 11 years old and completely addicted to "Gilmore Girls". Seriously, even now, if anyone asks me what my favorite show is my answer will be "Gilmore Girls". If you don't know the show, it's about this mother-daughter pair who live in a very extravagant little town in Connecticut and just follows them as they go along with their lives and fall in love. The daughter, Rory, has always dreamt of going to Harvard, she's wicked smart, but ends up going to that Ivy I didn't name before. So that's kind of what brought me back because, of course, since Rory was going there I HAD to go there. I remember clearly how obsessed I was with it, I started searching for summer programs and looking up pictures, memorizing its building's names and tons of other stuff I am not going to mention.
Soon enough, my mom explained very clearly to me why I'd never go (aka money, grades, blablabla) which I guess was appropriate but also kind of hard for an 11 year old.
That's why, when one of my childhood friends just casually mentioned how she hoped to get in, my heart tighened a bit and I found myself thinking something along the lines of  "she may get the life I always dreamed of" which was also surrounded by a feeling of jealousy and joy. Yes, yes I am very happy for my friend, and this is an amazing chance for her, and for me indirectly 'cause let's be honest, how many times am I going to go visit her if she actually goes there? Hundreds of thousands of times.
However, it does bring this weird nostalgic feeling, that dream of a life I would never live but that I will always wish. This unfounded nostalgia is the worst kind of nostalgia, because it just isn't healthy. This longing for something you've never known is a very dangerous feeling, actually, since it's just idolizing something that is completely strange to you, but that you think you know so well. That's why it kind of pisses me off when people say things like "OMG I was born in the wrong century. Like, WHY wasn't I born in __ (insert decade)????"
So you guys, I'm back.
Also, I'M ALIVE.

this song is ridiculously good, you have to admit it, even if you don't like her