There are a lot of things I find myself participating in these days that I never thought I would. Usually, it’s the regular life stuff like doing the dinner dishes without complaint and talking to my dog in complete sentences as if she understands what I’m saying.
These are the small things that a twenty-year-old Lindsay promised herself she’d never do. The problem is, people change and grow and sometimes, a girl just needs to have a deep and meaningful conversation with her dog about why it is unwise to hump strangers in the park.
Another thing I’ve been doing lately is time travelling.
This wasn’t one of those items on an imaginary checklist that I vowed never to do. It was always more of an inherent thing. It’s only been recently that I’ve started writing stories about my past lives. Opening up those moments from long ago can be a painful thing, and, as I’ve mentioned so frequently, feelings are tough for me, so revisiting my past has been a long and challenging road.
Those long-ago memories make me uncomfortable and cause me to sweat right through my bra cups (yes, I sweat from my boobs. It might be a medical condition).
Well, up until I started time travelling.
Time travelling is easy if you know what you’re doing and when enough is enough. Because the greatest danger of this specific type of journey is that there is a genuine risk of remaining trapped in a past world.
You’ll feel like you might be able to change things. Alter your past self into some new present reality.
And, frankly, that’s impossible. So you (meaning me) needs to stop trying.
. . .
Recently, I found myself bawling alone on the couch.
I was sobbing the distinct sort of ugly cry one gets when they have been touched by something so viscerally there is no chance in hell of stuffing down the feelings.
I had just watched Modern Loves’ Season Two Episode 3 — A Life Plan for Two, Followed by One.
First of all, if you’ve never heard of Modern Love, an Amazon Original series, it is a compilation of short stories about, you guessed it, love and romance. These tales from the heart are based on articles in the New York Times, Modern Love column, and they are amazing.
Please, believe me when I tell you, this column on love and life is unputdownable. So in my mind, the next logical step was to binge the series on Amazon Prime.
This particular episode grew arms, reached directly out of the screen, grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me in without me even realizing it until it was too late.
. . .
The storyline is about a young girl who falls in love with her best friend from elementary school. I don’t want to give away any spoilers here if you, too, are an enormous fan of this show, but the bottom line is, shit goes sideways.
Maybe it was because this is such a common theme for young people who fall in love hard and fast that I felt so shattered by the tale. Or perhaps the character development is simply top-notch. But what I really think is that this particular story grabbed my brain and took me on a journey to visit my younger self.
All of those moments when I, as a young woman, was told how great of a friend I was. I was always the funny girl, the jokester, the confidant. I was a helpful ear to a pal who was having trouble with his girlfriend.
This 35-minute episode reminded me how loveable I was as a side character in my own coming-of-age story. Always the hilarious sidekick to my sexier, self-assured (and taller) girlfriends.
In the story, the MC becomes a comedienne, focusing on jokes about her awkward teenage years.
Um, hi.
I want to meet Marina Shifrin, whose 2013 essay inspired this episode, because I’m pretty sure we’d be best friends.
There is something extraordinary about being transported to the past with a piece of present art, whether it be a painting at your local museum that jerks a remembrance in your brain or a song recommendation from a friend that earworms into your mind reminding you of teenage days.
The problem was, as I sat on my couch staring vacantly at the TV before me, I wasn’t really on my couch at all.
. . .
I am 14 years old and walking with a beautiful boy who I am crushing on hard. He’s stupid as all shit and doesn’t get any of my jokes, but I don’t care because I believe in the deepest crevice of my soul that I am not complete without a boyfriend.
We are making our way down to the beach to meet up with friends. I had spotted him walking as I rode in the passenger seat of my mom’s ancient Oldsmobile and told her to drop me off around the corner.
Then, I “coincidentally” bump into him as he rounds the bend.
“Fancy seeing you here!” I say, a little too eagerly.
We walk and walk and walk. Nothing is said in this time. At one point, he jumps to one of the overhead flowerpots that hang from a lamppost and plucks a purple and white-striped petunia out, then hands it to me.
Well, obviously, this means he loves me. I think that much is clear.
But what I don’t understand is that, sometimes a flower, is just a flower. A kind gesture can indeed mean friendship rather than love. Because in the same moment, he begins asking me about my friend, who he’s been in love with since 6th grade. Is she seeing anyone? How is her summer going so far? Will she be at the beach today?
I am shattered, but don’t show it. Instead, I dumb down a joke, so I can make him laugh.
. . .
When time travelling occurs, we — our older, wiser selves — want to fix the wrongs that have fallen upon our younger characters. No, don’t go into that house! Don’t meet up with that terrible boy who shatters your heart into so many pieces. Don’t ever dumb down a joke to impress a crush. That’s so weird that you would do that!
So much of our before-time days can be reminisced upon with regret.
But time travel isn’t physical. At least not yet. It is an idea, an image, a remembrance that kicks into action by the smallest things: a poem’s stanza, a conversation with your child, a heart-wrenchingly relatable TV show.
So I pulled myself out of the time vortex and found I was shaken on the couch — the memories of a past life, still vivid in my mind’s eye.
Then my husband walked into the living room, took one look at my swollen eyes, quickened his pace to where I sat and hugged me.
“Lind-Bae, you’ve got to stop watching these sad love stories,” he said with complete seriousness. I laughed then because anyone who can call their wife “Lind-Bae” and not even think twice about it is most certainly my soulmate.
I realized that time travelling in small doses is cathartic and can provide many answers to life’s endless questions. Much like this particular Modern Love segment, my destiny was more significant than the puppy love crushes who overlooked me as a teenager. It’s more important than any relationship.
My fate, I realized, is to help even just one other person time travel. To write the stories that remind us of shitty love interests and past hardships; to create that wormhole that connects the past and present and then remind people that the present, the now, is interminably better no matter the circumstances because it is where we stand, feet planted and ready to live.
As I thought about this, with my husband’s arm draped around me, I smiled. I told him a joke that I’d been thinking up and, without having to dumb it down, he laughed.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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