jennfrank.

thirteen

unidentified tarot spread from pinterest

For a lengthy while I've been trying to disentangle myself from various spiderwebs. But lately I've had to pivot and gradually reestablish a sort of paper trail of my own existence—this is like solving an adventure game puzzle, trying to divine the correct order of events, the procedure—plus start over with friends.

It's kind of like the double-bind that Sandra Bullock's character in The Net finds herself in. I do not remember this movie at all, except that I was excited to DoorDash a pizza without having to talk to anyone.

Is it such a great idea to go all the way off the grid, to make oneself invisible? I'm bringing myself back from the brink of, effectively, a legal death. Hmm. Maybe it's important to learn the difference between a web and a social safety net. Should I rewatch this movie?

One movie I did rewatch recently is Clueless. It's on Peacock. I cried and cried. Cher Horowitz, a control freak, attempts to 'fix' the people around her through social engineering, all the while oblivious to actual human motivations. Cher conditions Tai to care about Elton's affection, approval, and validation; although Tai's reaction to that character's rejection may be genuine, the connection itself never was. Cher's meddling directly results in a more shallow, performative, artificial Tai. High-masking, Cher doesn't understand that her own preoccupation with prescribed behaviors and social hierarchies damages others and conceals her true self from herself.

And although it has since been written about countless times, the true hero of the movie is Christian. Even though his friends are apparently constantly trying to date him, he likes them for who they are, non-transactionally, and he selflessly rescues Tai from two paragons of toxic masculinity at the mall (who really do jeopardize her life and well-being). Etc etc.

I often wonder if the only life we will ultimately perceive is our 'best' life—that the final attempt is the one that counts—but that we do remember all our own failures and worst-case scenarios. Sometimes I wonder if that might be what OCD or 'catastrophic thinking' really is. What if we're actually remembering all the times our various plots and strategies failed? (Again: I have diagnosed OCD! I am allowed to ruminate on rumination!!)

I am really amused by all the healing-your-inner-child journal prompts to write a letter to your younger self since, as a young person and especially as a pre-teen, I in fact typed up a lot of letters to my older self—begging for information, for direction, for clarity, basically. "Write back if you can ever figure out how," I would implore, apparently believing that my older self was gonna figure out time travel for me.

Today I started writing a letter back. "Don't you understand that time is a flat circle and that we've been in constant communication this entire time?" I wrote her.

She'll hate this. She already knows this, or had always suspected at least. She'd wanted an actual letter in hand, like the ones her dad occasionally sent. Cartoons in the margins.

You might call it anxious-avoidant; I call it "five father figures and one ex died during brief lapses in two-way communication." I am working on this.

I will definitely not be mentioning this current project to my younger self. I do not think she'd be able to handle it. All she wants is a physical, tangible letter from a strong female character. And I know this kid; if she ever receives such a letter, she will not be writing back. She'll fold it into thirds and slip it into the back of a hardcover book and then do some marathon yearning. That's all right, kiddo. Plenty of communication is one-way.

Other topics covered in my letter to my younger self: