Lady Bird

rewatched this a year ago during one of my lower moments, minutes before i rang in my 19th birthday. maybe it was the reality of getting older, or just feeling utterly lost in the world, thinking i didn’t have a place in it anymore, or a combination of every negative feeling i had known up until that point. i looked at these characters and saw the worst versions of myself; in lady bird’s desperate need to escape the people who were supposed to love her, in her mother’s attempts at reconciling a bond with no effort from the other end, in fucking timothée chalamet’s character’s pretentious tendency to believe government conspiracies and read howard zinn at a coffee shop. i felt seen, but in the most pitiful sense. i remember wishing that in a year i wouldn’t feel like this anymore and well, today is so different. i’m different. i feel lady bird’s excitement for the future, realizing that she is loved and people care about her. i think i’ve finally come to know that feeling a little better; we’re really not as alone as we fear. can’t even begin to describe how grateful i am to have made it to this moment, and how lucky i feel to experience the people and places around me. freshly 19 arshia was miserable, but freshly 20 arshia sees the next year as the most wonderful adventure waiting to happen. thank you lady bird, for showing me the parts of myself that i wish to leave behind and the parts that i hope to grow into. here’s to all of us finding our way.