Fierce Aspirations for My Teenage Years

Visual by Hannah Scarpelli

Under the penetrative pressure of my newest frenemy, quarantine, I’ve been enjoying an extended vacation in the company of all my thoughts. Enjoying is a strong word- perhapssurviving is more fitting, because I haven’t completely liked the strange glimpse into my soul that isolation has ordered for me. I’m treading water here, trying to produce music and listening to a lot of it, watching sad movies, and writing like the next great sacrilegious scripture is going to spring out of my laptop. When it comes to filling the void, these things seem to be just barely missing the mark, as sparks of ruminative thought stay lit in my mind.

For me, isolation is cause to think about what could’ve been, as well as what still can be. It comes at the worst time, Spring in the Midwest, when small town landscapes become animated with giddy thoughts of Summer to come. Every road is one that I might drive on with my friends while singing our favorite songs. Every beach is one that I might watch the stars from at 4 AM. Every bed is one I might share with a friend, swapping anecdotes at the sleepover until we’re worn out. I simultaneously torture and inspire myself sitting in my room creating vivid scenarios in my head for things that could happen. It fills me with excessive nostalgia for the past and high standards for the future.

Something is different about this time in life. I’ve spent most of my years prior to this feeling exactly the same as I do now: wishing to live through something (Lady Bird, anyone?) I grew up as a wannabe Tumblr girl, listening to The 1975 and Lana Del Rey and gazing at pictures of girls wearing pleated skirts making a fuss in the night. At age thirteen, all I wanted was to be sixteen living in the dreamy adolescent world I had created in my head. I have always been dreaming and searching for the next best thing to make me feel alive. At a certain point, I was sixteen. My inner thirteen year old felt like it was the point where I was supposed to stop dreaming my life and start living it. But at sixteen I was still dreaming, and then I was seventeen, eighteen, and now nineteen.

Nineteen is different, because I am absolutely sure that my inner thirteen year old is right; these years of my life are the ones where I should be living in my dreamy adolescent world. I mean, I’m literally living young at the same time Beach Bunny and Snail Mail exist. I have the capability, the creativity, and the goddamn transportation to do whatever I want. But life seems to be tripping and snagging on all kinds of loss and mood swings on the way down. I have everything but the moments to live through. This time in life is different, because it’s quite certainly the time to mobilize and finally wear a pleated skirt.

I’ve been taking this time to revisit the music and images I lived through when I was younger. And I mean watching every Lana Del Rey music video, reading every one of my fan- fiction drafts, learning random facts about the production of the Twilight movies- reallyrevisiting. Coming back to my roots, I’ve found that I still love everything I used to. In turn, my isolation has become about the overwhelming nostalgia I have for the times before quarantine, and most of all, it has become about the resurgence of my fierce aspirations for my teenage years. Time is going on, but I am lost somewhere between its limits, one foot in the curious past and the other in the technicolor future.

The question becomes, who am I going to be when this is over?

Everyday is an identity crisis growing up. This is especially true during isolation, when you’re stripped of all the opportunities you have to show off your identity in the first place. I ask, will my dreams find their footing when the quarantine is lifted? How is all this dreaming and hoping gonna manifest itself, now that I’m well aware that it’s finally time for me?

There are moments in the calm humidity of a Summer night waiting for me. I see a girl sitting in the leather interior of a beater car, belting out the lyrics to her favorite songs. I see a girl sprawled out in sand, eyes turned to the impossible space between the midnight blue of Lake Michigan and the sky. I see a girl wrapped in white sheets, giggling about some past fuck-up in the confidence of friends. At what point does she become me?

I present a quote from Ms. Del Rey herself on the matter: “I never really noticed that I had to decide to play someone’s game, or live my own life,” she sings in Get Free. I have to understand that living true to the standards I’ve imagined for my life is a decision. And from there, maybe making that decision is a pivoting step in coming into my identity. The person who does all the things they’ve dreamt up for themself is a person who has embraced all the things they’ve loved, past and present, and who deems their identity worthy of being a star player in the creation of their moments. I’d like to be that person. I think we all would.

You can (and should) make the decision right now while still in isolation. It feels like there isn’t much to do to compound it until this all ends, but I have some ideas. In a way, it feels like I should just keep imagining. If I can tell myself that I’m going to pursue my life as soon as I can, I can accept this as a hibernation. Take the time to reconnect with the things that shaped your dreams in the first place. Watch the music videos for the songs you’re gonna scream in the car. Call the people who will share your bed and rejoice in your plans for when June rolls around. It’s okay to be excited. It’s okay to feel powerless. It’s okay to imagine.