With my graduation just around the corner in three weeks, it’s hard for me not to feel like I face impeding doom, a deep dark hollow , extreme uncertainty in front of me, as I leave University, and have to ask myself: what’s next? Of course, I have a few things lined up, but that will depend on whether or not I’m good enough they will work out, if things will arrange themselves, you know life. Fact is, though, as of this minute, if I were graduating today, I’d have no job, no future, no nothing. It kind of makes you freak out.
And question every decision you’ve ever made that led you to this place, which, apparently, it’s a normal place to be when you’re graduating University. (Except most people graduating are much younger than twenty-five-year old me because they didn’t waste two and a half years at Law School). As you can see, I’m in a bit of a life freaking out right now. Which leads to my post.
In my last vacation, just as these feelings of total despair confusion started to settle, my friends suggested that I watched this tv show, which turned out to be one of the best things I’ve done all year. Possibly in my life, because it completely changed me. The show is called Being Erica, and it’s not only the best show I’ve ever watched (sorry, Charmed, I still love you!), but it’s exactly what I’ve needed this year, as I go through all these stupid confusing messed up growing up changes.
Let me catch you up: the show is about this woman, Erica Strange, who’s thirty-two years old, and about as underachiever as one can be (Hello, instant identification!). She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s beautiful, but she holds a low class job, she doesn’t hold on to a guy, and she’s super insecure. And she blames it in her past choices. Fine. We’ve all done that (right?). In an especially bad day, in which she a) is fired from her job, b) is dumped by a guy she’s dating, c) suffers an allergic reaction and almost dies d) all the previous answers, Erica is approached, a the hospital, by Dr. Tom, a therapist that claims he has the only therapy she’ll ever need: results guaranteed.
(Follow this link NOW and watch this Being Erica trailer and go watch the whole show! It WILL change YOUR LIFE! and if you’re thinking: “But I don’t want my life to change.” That’s where you’re wrong!)
And that’s where she show really starts. Dr. Tom’s brand of therapy is hardly traditional: he does Time Traveling Therapy, which allows Erica to go back in time, revisit her past mistakes/bad choices, undo them, and change herself and her life. But that’s the best thing about the show, though: it falls far away from the cliché, because as Erica goes back in time, changes her past, her actions, her mistakes, her present hardly changes. Very, very little of her current life is actually changed by changing the past. What truly changes is the inside of her. What her trips to the past truly offer her is perspective on what’s happening, on how she came to be the person she is and how she could change and improve that person. And that’s what makes the show completely amazing. Because if it was touch and go, change and done, there would be little to learn from it.
Also, you have to give huge props to Erin Karpluk, the actress who plays Erica, who’s about the most relatable girl in the world. She’s gorgeous, but not in an Angelina Jolie sort of way, more like, “Wow, if I really took care of myself, I could actually be as pretty as that girl.” She feels so real, and her face has about the most beautiful shape in the world. And, I have to say this, no actress ever cries as well as she does. It’s like she’s feeling everything Erica is. It’s amazing.
So, I watched this show, and as I saw Erica grow and change, it really inspired me to go after what I want to. But, if you know me, I’m about as insecure and underachiever as they get, too (basically, I AM Erica Strange, without the being gorgeous part and having all the hot guys around me). Of course, when a show had this much impact on me, it’s hard not to wonder, how would I do Time Traveling Therapy? What would I change? What are my regrets?
Maybe that’s the greatest difference between Erica and I. She has tons of regrets, while I have very few. I mean, she has these huge regrets, and and mine are mostly very silly things that would hardly affect the way I view life and the world. Like, the first thing I can think I really regret, from the top of my head, is not going to the Spice Girls reunion concert (in Vegas or Los Angeles) when I was in Reno. I mean, such a missed opportunity, right? But it hardly changes my life. (Although, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that one. It’s the Spice Freakin’ Girls!)
Still, my regrets are few. Do I regret the two and half years I spent in Law School that stalled my life? I don’t kn0w. If I weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have started Linguistics and Lit when I did, and I wouldn’t have met all my friends and my professors. So, how could I?
Do I regret not being more involved in University from the beginning? Yes. And No. Because I promised myself I wouldn’t go through another University Hell like I did with Law School. And I didn’t find myself in anything at school until my last year when I discovered Sociolinguistics. Being more involved before that would have meant putting myself through something I didn’t want to. So, I don’t think I regret, not really.
I guess what I mean is, Time Traveling Therapy would be an amazing idea to gain perspective from the past, to see how things could have been different, to have gone to that concert!!!!, but, in the end, I don’t know how that would work for me. (Not that regular therapy is all that great either). In the end, what I really did learn with Being Erica was to go after I wanted, to break away from my insecurities, to be strong, be myself, be kind, don’t give into pressure, don’t be so hard on myself, that you can love someone and they may not be the right one for you, that you can be in love with someone, but not sexually attracted to them, that family is everything and so are friends, that time and space do matter when it comes to love, and that I want it all for myself some day.
My point is, I wouldn’t change much about my past, because it made me who I am. That’s how the show works anyway. She changes the past, and she still needs to change the present anyway. So, what I need to change, is me. From now on. Here and now. Today, tomorrow and the day after. Next year. Even though I feel I’m going to be swallowed whole by life. And I have no idea what’s coming. And I’m scared as hell.
So, my question for you is: if you could go back in time, do Time Travel Therapy, or maybe just once, would you change anything? What would you change? Do you think changing your past would change your present?
ALSO, GO WATCH BEING ERICA! 🙂
Books & Hugs 