A Weird Honest Ramble About Hepburn & Bogart

This is the second time I have double-posted in one day. Like, a double double-post. Anyways, there's so much to say and maybe it feels like it's right to document it because I'm leaving for college and, like I've said, life moves so fast and before I know it I'll be graduating for the second time and everything I have going on now will be a memory and I don't want to get that memory wrong.


A couple weeks ago, I was FaceTiming my best guy friend. He wanted advice about love and life, as most of my friends usually do. The only thing I could think of to tell him was to tell him to put it in perspective. I carried him over to the corner of my room and whipped out my journal from sophomore year, stashed underneath my book about Hamilton the musical. I wish I still kept up a journal. I probably should make a note to start journaling again, but I digress.

I read bits and pieces to him, about the first time I was asked out and the first couple dates I'd ever gone on. We laughed about how melodramatic it was. I told him how big a deal I made it out to be at the time when, in reality, it wasn't a big deal because here I am 3 years later and I'm fine and the guy I went out with for a couple weeks is fine too and happy and we don't talk much. Right now, there are plenty of things I'm stressing over, things like boys and prom season and graduation, that won't mean much next year.

Speaking of boys, how can you find closure and move on from something that didn't even happen? Not to spit out a ton of sob stories, but seriously. I'd like to know. The problem with pining over a guy or having an unrequited crush is that there isn't ever really a solid break-up or conversation. It's all a one-sided, chaotic mess. Anyway, going into college with not much romantic history under your belt can be pretty daunting. Not necessarily bad, just weird.

Do you ever get a feeling like you're the side friend? Like, if your life were a movie it wouldn't even really be about you, it would be about someone else who's close to you and you'd star as the side friend - witty quips and messy hair and strangely powerful bits of Oprahesque wisdom over bowls of ice cream? But, as Kate Winslet reminded us in The Holiday,

I was reading The Infinity Diaries today, this series of essays that Tavi Gevinson (my idol) wrote on Rookie. She was talking about how we grow up with expectations about love through the media and through literature. And it's true - really all I know about love is what I've read and listened to in music and heard about from friends. Joan Didion said, "I tended to perceive the world in terms of things read about it. I [had] a literary idea of experience, and I still don’t know where all the lies are." Where are the lies? I haven't a clue because most of my experiences with love have been pretty negative. And, really, it's extremely difficult to date when you're super romantically shy and an INFJ. And, apparently, it's especially difficult if you're not willing to get very, very drunk at parties on weekends. Hence, the pining.

I relate most to Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina with her experiences with guys. I can only hope to have as much of a glow-up as she does. I mean, she goes to Paris, befriends an old aristocrat, cuts her hair, gets a new wardrobe, and returns a brand-new woman, leaving the guy she's had a crush on since she was a child completely smitten. But, in the end, (spoiler alert) she ends up falling in love with his older brother, Humphrey Bogart, and sails away to Europe with him, which is way better. My only options are swishy-haired, Vineyard Vine-clad, lacrosse-obsessed private school rich boys. Hardly comes close to a Humphrey Bogart. 

Please please please say college is better than this. 

That's all for now.

K