December 2013: Forever
I. A Brief History of Forever
Forever is the state, exclusive to those between the ages of 13 and 17, in which one feels both eternally invincible and permanently trapped. When my parents were young, Forever was expressed through promise rings, names carved into trees, and photographs you could hold in your hands. In the years since, Forever has inspired many phrases and ideas popular among adolescents: Best Friends Forever, Together Forever, Forever Young. In more recent years, Forever, with its cousins Always and Infinity, has dominated
young adult literature, differentiated the internet from the more fleeting IRL, and, one could argue, explained the popularity of the
galaxy print. Nothing lasts forever, of course, but Nothing doesn’t resonate with a teenager the way Forever does, because, for better or worse, it’s hard to imagine ever not feeling this way, being this person, having this life.
I waited my whole life for Forever. I started reading Seventeen at age seven and regarded my camp counselors, babysitters, older sisters, my sisters’ friends, and my dad’s high school students with more reverence and awe than I did any actual grownup. And really, truly? My Forever didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t perfect, but therein lies its perfection: I’ve been lucky to come up in a time when there are enough teen movies that make high school’s terribleness into something interesting at worst and beautiful at best, so even the darkest times were not lonely, but strangely magical. John Hughes said that “one really key element of teendom” is that it “feels as good to feel bad as it does to feel good,” so really, I’ve had a solid run. Forever is not meant to be the best time of someone’s life, but it is certainly the most Forever-y. So I’m not sad because I think post-Forever seems terrible, I’m sad because Forever is remarkably peculiar, and I’ve really enjoyed trying to understand why, and I will miss it.
I’ve often worried that this ambition to understand my own teenage existence has lessened its sincerity, made my experiences too self-aware, but it’s been quite the opposite. Chris Kraus writes in
I Love Dick, “The Ramones give ‘Needles & Pins’ the possibility of irony, but the irony doesn’t undercut the song’s emotion, it makes it stronger and more true.” The self-awareness or irony or whatever you want to call it made it easier for me to appreciate the awful parts of Forever because I had the rose tint of nostalgia in real time. It granted me a sense of humor about the most resentful of teachers. I was careful not to hang out in the alley behind school often enough to find it redundant and oppressive. I let myself write bad poetry and diary entries because I knew they’d at least be funny to look back on. Of course, the idea of a time when I’d ever be looking back was nebulous to the point of being unimaginable, because Forever, Always, Infinity, etc.
Technically, I still have quite a bit of Forever left. I won’t be a legal adult until April. According to science,
adolescence now lasts till the age of 25. If we use high school as a timeline, I have six months left. But because my friends have already graduated, because I’m in the midst of planning my future, because I feel like I hold more memories of who I have been than an understanding of who I am now, I say with certainty that my own personal Forever is over. And I’m terrified.
II. A Theory of Forever’s Remarkable Peculiarity
Forever is when you have the height and width of a miniature person with the density of an alpha-person. Forever is when you’re a human cartoon with every vein and skin cell as exaggerated as Minnie Mouse’s gloves. Forever is when you experience all kinds of things for the first time, as do your hormones, which will never again be this crazed, never again experience things as either so bleak or so Technicolor. Forever is when your brain is still developing, so everything sticks, like a lot. Forever is when you have tunnel vision because you (I) have not yet understood that you (I) are not the center of the world, so you (I) grant yourself permission to see things as though you (I) are (am). I don’t recommend it as a lifestyle, but there’s something to be said for having this much time to just think about you, what you like, what you believe in, how you feel. When I asked
Sofia Coppola why she continually writes movies about teenagers, she said, “It’s a time when you’re just focused on thinking about things, you’re not distracted by your career, family.… I always like characters that are in the midst of a transition and trying to find their place in the world and their identity. That is the most heightened when you’re a teenager, but I definitely like it at the different stages of life.”
III. Different Stages of Life
Like she said, Forever is not the only time a person is transitioning, finding their place in the world, finding their identity. Forever is not the only time in which a person feels things strongly, or for the first time, or in a way that is central to their forming who they are. It’s maybe a crazy concentration of that time, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great time. Sometimes the awful parts are beautiful, but sometimes they’re actually just awful.
The good news is that most people’s lives get better after Forever. The bad news is that some people’s lives don’t, or they do, but those people themselves become cold and bitter and nostalgic for Forever, whether or not their own Forever was really worth pining for. Or, as Allison says in The Breakfast Club, “When you grow up, your heart dies.”
One way to avoid killing your heart is to decide that you will spend your whole life growing up. I am not saying you should aspire to the maturity level of the characters in Hot Tub Time Machine; I am suggesting we resist a life that looks, in line-graph form, like it goes up and up and up and then it stops, and then it levels out, and then it stays on that flat plane until death. I hope to live a life that goes up and up and up until the end, with the inevitable dip here and there. I hope to continue to learn and change.
Coveting youth also needs to be dealt with. I’m not afraid of being old; I’m afraid of being afraid of being old, which for some reason appears to be an inherent part of being old, because the examples out there of adults who aren’t trying to turn back time are few and far between. But a fear of aging turns every second into your enemy. It means that your worst nightmare is constantly coming true, unless you choose to die, which is a terrible choice to make. I generally like life—it lets me do things like eat good food, watch good TV, and have good friends—so I’d hate to have a bitter relationship to it, to hide from it, to dread it. I’d rather not romanticize a lack of knowledge. I’d rather be a wizard or a mad scientist or a walking encyclopedia. I’d rather get on with things than spend every day super pissed that we haven’t yet figured out time travel.
Finally, it’s important to take time to mourn Forever. I know this doesn’t have to be so tragic, I know I don’t actually want to stay in this place—but to effectively move on, I have to effectively wrap things up. Because I don’t want to long for Forever in small, unhealthy ways later, I have to honor it in big, creative ways now. Reflecting and archiving is not the same as dwelling in the past. It is not anti-living, but a part of life, even a crucial one. We do this to highlight one thing above others, so that a special moment can take up more space in our brains than an inconsequential one; so that, by plain math, our personal worlds contain more good things and fewer bad ones. Or more interesting things and fewer blah ones, since you have to record the bad, too. Like I said, Forever is not about being the best years of your life, just the most Forever-y.
IV. Grieving Period
I remember learning in eighth grade that you could be alone without being lonely, and enjoying many nights of watching Freaks and Geeks in my parents’ bed, zine- and collage-making materials at hand, soft yellow light coming from the lamp on the floor in the corner.
I remember sitting in social studies with the lights out and a movie on the projector. The boy I liked sat right at the front, backlit against a bright screen, so although he was turned around and facing in my direction, I couldn’t tell if his eyes were looking at me or not. This still drives me nuts.
I remember being in a play freshman year that brought an unexpected group of people together, prompting the, yes, Breakfast Club question of, Will we all still talk to each other in the halls on Monday? We didn’t really, but that turned out to be OK. We helped one another change, and then we moved on.
I remember sleepovers with Ella, the shadows in their white guest room as we lay on our backs, able to share secrets only when staring up at the ceiling.
I remember a family trip where my two tools of escape were a mixtape called Tomorrow I’ll Be 16 and a novel called Girl.
I remember the school’s music festival, knowing deep down that it was hopelessly lame but reveling in the opportunity to feel part of the pimply, heaving organism of the student body as it moshed in the cafeteria to a band that may or may not have actually been any good.
I remember twirling Emily to the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” that night and letting go upon realizing that she was like
Angela and I was like
Rayanne, this comparison generously heightened by Emily’s floral dress and red hair.
I remember walking home from school with Amelia, asking her about that boy I still liked, excited by the realization that I was like Angela and she was like Rayanne, this comparison generously heightened by Amelia’s colorful wardrobe and impossible charm.
I remember meeting Claire. She was a lot nicer than she had been that time I followed her into the school before first period, drawn to her Doc Martens and teal hair, only to be met by a suspicious scowl. We realized we liked the same music and disliked the same people. A few weeks later we’d visit a psychic to learn about our futures.
I remember sitting in biology and imagining myself getting a hall pass, suddenly looking like
Audrey Horne, and tracking down that boy I still liked. I remember going to his house a few months later and watching a reality show about a rifle competition. Things did not work out, but I got what I wanted out of it: a deeply emotional experience with the song “Thirteen” by Big Star.
I remember the way Chicago looks from the top of an Oak Park parking garage, a cluster of Lego buildings against a sky orange from the city lights, a soundtrack of gossip between two kids I only kind of knew but already decided I really liked.
I remember sophomore year, sitting on the walking bridge over the Eisenhower the night Claire told me everything. An elderly man went by one way and smiled, and on his way back, stopped in front of us and said, “If I don’t see you again, I hope you have a happy rest of your lives.”
I remember liking a new boy, and thinking he liked me too, and then he didn’t, and I decided that this was better, because now I could listen to Heart and Carole King records and light candles and gaze out my window and feel sorry for myself.
I remember my 16th birthday, dancing to my favorite songs with my new friends under the pink balloons and silver stars that clouded our dining room, eating waffles made of cake batter, and then taking a communal clothed bath at Claire’s (my friend Claire’s house, not Claire’s the store). We fell asleep in a pile and woke up dreading the walk home, because even though it was a beautiful spring day, it meant the night was over.
I remember when Petra visited with her camera and I realized just how special the suburbs could be.
I remember Anne’s birthday when we went to the cemetery, a wacky adventure for a bunch of people who are too young to realize that they’ll end up there, too. Most of us chickened out and went to the strip mall across the street. Claire claimed they saw a ghost inside. We then went to an elementary school playground and were promptly asked to leave.
I remember junior year, liking a new boy, and changing my hallway route so it would coincide with his. It never did, because, as I’d later find out, he was trying to do the same.
I remember walking down Anne and Lizzy’s alley with Galaxie 500’s “
Here She Comes Now” on my headphones, each garage’s sensor light going on in sync with the song as I went past.
I remember the New Year’s Eve when I finally, officially met that new boy I liked, looking for him at a dank basement show we were all at, the room filled with red light and cigarette smoke that followed me through a narrow hallway and turned it into a tunnel of love. He stood alone in the crowded room at the tunnel’s end. His conversation starter was: “If you got married, and your husband went bald, would you be mad?” I said no, just in case we ever got married or whatever.
I remember the roller rink on Claire’s birthday, and Anne’s roof on Siobhan’s. I leaned against Anne’s lipstick-covered mirror and smiled as everyone sang along to “
Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed. They would all graduate weeks later.
I remember seeing Petra in Toronto a few weeks ago, listening to all our favorite songs and crying on a mattress in the center of her living room because we could feel the end. She gave me a book of her photos of me and of our time together throughout my adolescence. The cover reads “Nothing Lasts Forever.” We woke up the next day and learned that Lou Reed had just died. I came home and wrote this.
I don’t remember prom or homecoming. I don’t remember being very involved in my school’s community or extracurriculars after freshman year. But I do remember
Rookie prom, and other
Rookie events, all these amazing gatherings of the kinds of people I would LOVE to populate a school with. I remember getting to watch them all meet and bond, asking two girls how long they’d been friends, and them answering, “Just now, right here.”
Since I started this thing, lots of people have asked me if I feel like I lead a double life, but my Rookie memories have fit in so seamlessly with all the others described here, and I feel incredibly lucky for that. Thank you so much for reading our website and our books, for supporting us, for coming to our events. Thank you for creating the most inspiring community. Thank you for being part of my Forever, and part of one another’s. I know this one doesn’t end here.
Enjoy this month of valentines, BFFs, and fuzzy nostalgic holiday feelings. And really, seriously, thank you again.
Love always and actually forever,
Tavi
"
Carson Phillips: Malerie, why-why do you film everything? I mean, I'm sure you don't want to remember... EVERYTHING.Malerie Baggs: What isn't worth remembering? With good memories come bad memories and I've got a lot of both. At least this way I can fast-forward through all the bad stuff." (*Struck by lightning)
