Hello friends!
I am writing this from my living room couch, where my husband and I are watching a Norwegian movie called Troll (2022) on Netflix. It’s about a gigantic forest troll that is stomping out cottages in rural Norway and the Norwegians who try to stop him. It’s not really my type of film, but YouTube TV figured out that I’m using a long distance friend’s account and is thus blocking me from new episodes of Family or Fiancé.
What I wish I was watching is My Mad Fat Diary (2013), a British teen dramedy that had American Tumblr by the throat during its initial run. MMFD centers on Rae Earl (played perfectly by Sharon Rooney), a teenage girl living in 1990s Lincolnshire who desperately wants to fit in with her peers and move on with her life after spending four months in a mental hospital. I missed it back in the day, but my husband and I ran through all three seasons last weekend. It’s hilarious, sweet, ribald, and one of the most accurate depictions of how depression and anxiety feel from the inside.
I’ve found myself describing the experience of watching MMFD as “healing” when recommending it to friends. There are moments of catharsis Rae reaches that I’ve only achieved through a decade in therapy. But first, she pissed me off.
Rae is so terrified of getting hurt that she shuns anything she thinks may threaten her safety: new friends, requited crushes, life after secondary school. As an adult viewer, it’s easy to see all love she’s constantly begging off, and it pained me to watch Rae isolate herself from anybody who might perceive her humanity.
But it’s that heavy resistance that makes her first awkward grasps at a full life so triumphant. Though the show only follows about a year of her life, we witness her grow into the kind of person who does it scared. And so my irritation with Rae grew into pride, and then a tender question toward myself: What love are you running from?
I’ll be turning that over in my mind this week, and if you will, too, I hope our respective answers lead us somewhere sweet.
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On It’s Been A Minute this weekend, we’re re-running one of my all-time favorite episodes of For Colored Nerds, where I delve into my fear of motherhood and my love for Pamela Adlon’s masterwork of a series, Better Things. If you’re feeling homesick or in need of a cleansing laugh-cry, you can catch the entire series on Hulu.
Lastly if you’re reading this, there’s a strong chance you joined me from the cooling embers of Twitter, and for that I thank you. Everyone and their mom has a newsletter, yet you chose to subscribe to my little grownup LiveJournal. It really means a lot to me that you did.
I hope you have a splendid weekend, and that your next week rolls out ahead of you nice and easy.
Stay warm,
B