My So-Called Life

It is like 1994 every Monday night in my house since Sundance channel started running episodes of My So-Called Life. I was watching the episode where Angela (Claire Danes) & the gorgeous Jordan (Jared Leto) kiss after she finds out he can't read (gasp!) but he can serenade her with a song that she thinks is about her (but we later find out was about his car *insert eye roll here*).

Yes, it sounds so unbelievable (did anyone actually go to school with guys as good looking as Jared Leto, really?!?) but I like the simple honesty of what it's like to fall head over heels for someone for the first time. I like how at the end of the episode Jordan says: "She knows too much about me or something ... not really, but she makes too big a deal out of everything. She makes everything too complicated."

I like that even though it sounds pretty unbelievable, there is so much truth about being a teenager.
The simple truth is that I was an Angela - & so was every other girl at age fifteen: lying on your bed daydreaming about how love would happen, tongue tied around the guy you want to be in love with, & the overwhelming disappointment when you find out love doesn't happen like you thought that it would.
The real truth is that I was much more interesting at age fifteen than I am now. I was a dreamer. My ideas on how it would feel to fall in/be in love were carefully constructed from the movies I watched, lines I highlighted in the books I read, & from the songs I selected for the ever-important mix tape.

Yes, at fifteen I made a big deal out of everything; I made everything much too complicated. I thought it was the worst thing in the world to have to lay awake at night dreaming of love & career & life in general; at the time being fifteen was a tragedy, waiting on my "real life" to begin. I look back now, remembering all the dreams I had for myself & how 'first love' felt, & how I was beginning to define myself. I was passionate about everything, nothing was impossible.
Every Monday night, I turn to the Sundance channel and it's a 1994 episode of My So-Called Life. But really, I'm revisiting 2001 for an hour because I know that the real tragedy would be forgetting what it was like to be fifteen.


copyright Kyra Leseberg Photography 2011