As a twenty-two-year old, I still find a younger version of myself within me. Performed at Fourteen East Live 2026, "Nosalgia".
Believe it or not, Art and Blarp are not my childhood stuffed animals; they’re a recent addition to the family since I got them as birthday gifts a few years ago. This was after my mom told me I couldn’t bring my childhood stuffed animals to college, as she said, “Big girls don’t have stuffed animals.”
So naturally, when I stepped foot into my freshman dorm and was greeted by my roommate’s unicorn, Horny, someone felt guilty. And I know what you’re thinking, maybe she had a point. I mean what college student has stuffed animals?
Well, that’s the thing about a girl who can never move on.
I’m weeks away from graduating and going on to get my master’s — no, not in make-believe, in journalism — and yet, still I find my childhood self within me.
As a young girl trapped in a 22-year-old’s body, I continue to believe there is a Princess of Genovia, I’ll marry Harry Styles, and swing sets are rocket ships.
For the last few St. Patrick’s Days, after partaking in the only college experience Chicago has to offer (BORGs), I call my mom from the green-dyed river downtown just to say I miss her.
And with every ring and every sip, I’m transported back to making leprechaun traps out of cardboard boxes with her, my dad and my brothers.
Where my younger self couldn’t have predicted she’d trade wearing green to avoid a leprechaun pinch for a down coat, or gold coins for some disgusting mystery green juice that my friends made at 9 a.m. in a flask to stay warm. And yet somewhere along the way, St. Patrick’s Day dinner in my California backyard became standing in downtown Chicago at 10 a.m. freezing my ass off and watching an already green river turn neon green.
But like relics that live in my mind, they also live on the shelves through the novels that fill our college-girl apartment. Shelves twice the size of the one in my childhood bedroom, whose spines once read Fancy Nancy, Nancy Drew, Percy Jackson and The Selection series. Yet, it’s only after a night out when we choose to read the finest piece of literature our brownstone apartment has to offer. Not Demon Copperhead or The Nightingale, but Junie B. Jones.
And somehow all the burdens of graduating, cooking dinner for myself, submitting an assignment by 11:59, wondering about my reproductive rights, asking myself will I make my family proud — it all fades away in the comfort of small words, big pictures and the smell of our weed bowl being used.
As I sink into a chair with a children’s book and old varsity sweatpants that no longer fit, suddenly I’m just the kid told to help bring in groceries, or set the silverware or plop on the couch with my family to watch Love Actually.
Watching it every year means watching Emma Thompson get absolutely heartbroken by her husband (played by Alan Rickman) as he doesn’t buy her the necklace she saw in his pocket, but instead gives it to his assistant mistress. The movie is so ingrained in me that “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell starts playing in my head, most times after I’ve had too many Guinnesses. It almost tastes like I’m back on my semester abroad in Ireland, where I listened to that song over and over for comfort, replaying Emma Thompson crying in my head.
Back when An Bróg closed at 2 a.m. and craving a burrito felt like the only real troubles I had. Looking back, it’s hard not to see it from both sides now.
I mean it was just a year ago, living in a foreign country on my own, that I wanted to swap out my MAC lipstick for Barbie lip gloss, all because I felt too grown up. And of course that’s where my mother would chime in over the phone, across our eight-hour time difference and an ocean away, just to say, “Welcome to adulting.”
So I keep imagining Emma Thompson wiping her tears, folding a blanket, and returning to her children and Rickman. All while I drain my glass and snap out of the ache for a simpler time.
And that’s the thing, no one gets it. They don’t understand how enraging it is to be so nostalgic — to never be taken seriously when everyone knows my fear of storms, because California never got storms like this. Or when asked what movie to throw on with my roommates after returning from the club at 2 a.m. and all I suggest is Princess Diaries.
So after my best friend and I went to a long happy hour, I knew she wouldn’t get it when, six rosés deep, I started crying.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t understand. I’m just thinking of a really sad movie,” I sobbed.
Being the empathetic friend that she is, she assumed I was crying over my usual devastating favorites.
“Well, yes, Beautiful Boy is a sad movie,” she said.
“No,” I replied, “You don’t get it.”
“Then tell me,” she asked one more time, growing frustrated.
“Okay…”
“The 2004 The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. When SpongeBob and Patrick are drying out in the Shell City gift shop and, with their last dying breath, they sing, ‘I’m a Goofy Goober yeah, we’re all Goofy Goobers yeah.’ Then the sprinkler goes off, they ride David Hasselhoff’s back to save Bikini Bottom from Plankton. It was such an emotional last twenty minutes.”
I mean, I don’t know what it is. I’m a young girl living in a twenty-two-year-old’s body.
And yet only days ago, I ran a half marathon, went to doctor’s appointments by myself, had job interviews, moved away from my family for college, stood up for myself, learned I prefer red over white, been heartbroken, had exams I thought I would fail, moved to a foreign country alone, reported for NBC, endured Chicago winters, raced a mile in Lake Michigan and been out way past my bedtime. Yet when I get home after a night out, I always find myself coming back to Art and Blarp.
Header Image by Lindsay Freiberger
Be First to Comment