The first time I rode through that infamous tunnel into Pittsburgh I made my mom blast “Heroes” by David Bowie. With the windows rolled down and a smile on my face, I felt like I was finally having my perfect Perks of Being a Wallflower moment, finally having that quintessential, picturesque, coming-of-age epiphany.
For a long time, to know me was to know that I loved coming-of-age movies—they seemed to fill an insatiable need in my soul, and I thought that I would never get enough of them. But lately, I’ve noticed that they’ve started to fall flat, a gulf growing between these films and me, as my age and my experiences move further and further away from those of high school coming-of-age movies. There’s a kind of sadness there, a deep loss that I never really considered about growing up, a letting go of films that had been my home for so long, that had been tied so closely to my identity. My twentieth birthday is just around the corner, and I’ve never really been a person who felt weird about their birthday. But this year I do. This year it feels like a final marker. A distinct moment that I’m no longer a teenager, that I’m no longer coming-of-age. It feels like a reminder that it's time—time to let go of teenagehood, to let go of coming-of-age.
And there’s a kind of brokenness that comes with that, an acknowledgment of the beauty I found in so many of these films, a beauty I still see so clearly but isn’t so perfect for me anymore. These films are now someone else’s, they are past memories for me, instead of current experiences. Those vivid moments, of Charlie in the tunnel (Perks of Being a Wallflower), of the Dead Poets running through the leaves (Dead Poets Society), of Earl and Greg and Rachel sitting on the curb eating ice cream (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), aren’t for me anymore in the way they once were. They are no longer what’s directly in front of me, but rather, what’s behind me, a reminder of the love, loss, and laughter that was teenagehood. A reminder of something I’m endlessly grateful for, but no longer so completely a part of.
And I feel it. That growing up, that confusion and pain, in my viewing habits. In the films I now gravitate towards. I find myself now being more enraptured by films like Cha Cha Real Smooth, Francis Ha, and Shiva Baby. That feeling of wandering, of finding out who you are—that feeling that is so ever-present in coming-of-age movies but that grows and changes and presents itself in different ways the older you grow. A lot of the same emotions are there, but they’ve morphed into different forms, forms not grounded so much in high school, but in the wider world, in college, in relationships, in jobs, and so much more. My world is bigger now, so are my worries, and so are my dreams. That kind of precipice I felt myself standing on when I was so enraptured with coming-of-age movies, I now find myself in the midst of—I’m not waiting for that first step—I’ve taken it, and I’m trying to figure it out along the way.
Growing up is really hard. There’s loss and there’s pain and there’s responsibility, and there are so many other hard things that you never even expect. But there are also so many beautiful things. As you grow, you accumulate pain, but you also accumulate beauty—there is a wider capacity for hurt, but also a wider capacity for love and joy. And all of that is something that I’m very actively learning, as I begin to see differently so many different films that have meant so much to me, as I distance myself from the intense closeness with which I once held them. And as I go in search of something new.
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