My So-Called Life originally aired when I was 13, and since it's now streaming online (also on DVD) I've watched the entire series a few times through. Watching it at as a grown-up is a surreal experience, because not only do you remember what it's like to live through high school, but you realize firsthand that the parents are having just as hard of a time as the kids. So I, a grown woman, not only wept like a baby at the episode where Angela finds out Rayanne slept with Jordan Catalano, I also got a familiar, wish-I-didn't-know-how-it-felt knot in the pit of my stomach when Angela's mother, feeling excluded on vacation, gets wasted at dinner and makes a fool out of herself just to fit in.
No other show before or since then has so perfectly captured what it is like not just to be a teenager, but to be human. In my experience, Angela Chase feels how most people truly feel in the course of a day: conflicted, awkward, alone, smart, dumb, ugly, not-so-ugly, cool, uncool, depressed, elated, sincere, sarcastic.... We may think we grow out of this mindset but we don't. We just get better at hiding it, and if we are lucky we learn to accept, deal with and maybe even embrace it a little (also known as maturity).
One of my goals during my Saturn return is to be more mature. And by that I don't mean not watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force or buy a house, I mean better handle the natural fluctuations in everything. Weather the storms of life, if you will. For me, that means not taking it so hard when things don't go as I'd like them to, not letting anxiety stop me from doing things I want to do (or making me do things I don't), and saving my anger for things that I can somehow change by being angry about.
I supposed this means not yelling "Jesus fuck Christ almighty goddamn son of a fucking bitch I'm going to fucking kill somebody" - a direct quote - when I pinch my finger in the silverware drawer, which I just did.
This will be hard. Blerg.
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