SO many of us have spent the summer tuning into The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSITP). We have spent 11 hours screaming at the TV, crying at the TV, and mostly wishing everyone would just say what is on their mind. It’s no wonder this season of TSITP has taken everyone by storm. It is the season that captures the chapter of our life so perfectly.
We are all young once. We are naive and confident and silly and make decisions that we regret. We try new things and we experiment. We find out what we like and what we don’t like. We push ourselves out of our comfort zone and we cry when we realise we have grown up more than we realised. We feel nostalgic for a time that we remember so perfectly. A time where everything felt simpler. And when we are older, we look back at our younger selves and question the decisions that we made. We might feel shocked, excited, euphoric or even regretful at the things that we did. But we will never feel neutral.
The twenties are a chapter that is filled with love, and loss, confusion and impulsivity. Most of us will experience heartbreak for the first time, and will find ourselves and lose ourselves and then find ourselves again.
Throughout this season we have watched Belly become her own person. We have watched her grow, age, change, we have watched her make mistakes and we have been infuriated with her decisions. And, as annoying as some of her decisions might be, I think it’s important to remember that we are all going to make mistakes in our twenties. We are going to get things wrong. If our lives were movies, the audience would probably shout a little bit at us too. But sometimes, we do have to make those mistakes, and no this is not me saying everyone should date their childhood bestie, get engaged to his brother, move to Paris and then fall back in love with the childhood bestie and brother of their ex-fiancee because that is NOT the one, but when we are young we do things that don’t make sense. We act on impulse and feeling and feel as though we know everything about the world, as though we are flying, when the reality is we have seen but a drop in the ocean.
I think I have fallen in love with this season in particular because it has reminded us that deep down, you always know what you want. That you can’t let go of something that is meant for you, and that what is meant for you will always find you.
Again and again and again.
Sometimes we might need to run from all we know. We may need to reinvent ourselves, we may need to work out who we are without the pressures of who we should be, but this doesn’t mean we won’t find ourselves again. Just like Conrad left to California, and Belly ran to Paris; sometimes running is the only way we can see what sticks. Sometimes we have to change everything about ourselves to see the things that are engraved forever. The things that make you you.
So as this season comes to an end (and the MOVIE starts up!!), I hope you allow yourself to see your younger self for who and what they were: young, learning and figuring it out, just like Belly.
Love Bella 💌