Is It Any Wonder I Never Figured It Out?

I was thinking this morning about My So Called Life probably one of the most pivotal 19 hours of my life -- probably the 19 hours that I have relived most often and can even relive (unlike the moments and events that occurred in my "actual" life) and that meant the most in the foundation of me and who I am. Beyond any other cultural moments in my existence, being 15 in 1994 and watching that show was like a "pinprick to my heart" (to steal a quote from the Indigo Girls). Talk about defining moments in time and "formative" years -- that show is the very fabric of my understanding of the world -- it's confusing, untrustworthy, and treacherous -- and relationships -- they are misunderstood, miscommunicated, painful, and open-ended, left hanging...

Open-ended? Right at the major moment of climax, right when there may have been resolution or clarity, the show was canceled. So is it any wonder that I never figured out how to relate to others or how to make progress in my life? The only teacher I had, left me right before the cram for the final exam, so I never took the test, and I never passed to the next year. I'm still stuck in limbo at 15 waiting to learn how to grow up and become something other than an awkward, insecure, introvert who hides behind a big mouth and loud hair.

At nearly 30, I relate better to the culture of early-nineties teens than I do to my well-adjusted peers who all seem to have been more focused on 90210 than the depressing and spiritually-tortured so-called world of Claire and Co, that apparently I'm still struggling in. If only we had episodes 20+ that could have, in the tradition of sitcoms, finally wrapped it all up and made sense of the noise.