My favorite TV show is ending. “Girls,” the often controversial and critiqued HBO series, is ending. While the mourning period hasn’t yet hit me, my friends and I can still bemoan the ridiculous choices the characters in the show make. Usually while watching, either one of my fellow “Girls” watchers (looking at you, Gaby and Lily) or I will say in exasperation, “When are they going to grow up?”
If you follow the show, this question is valid. After six seasons of misadventures and palm-to-forehead moments, it’s hard to know if these characters are going to grow up by the tenth and final episode of the season. Can Lena Dunham wrap things up in such a neat box with a bow?
Any time I watch the show, it’s hard not to relate to a lot of the (hyperbolic, usually self-induced) trials the characters go through. After all, I think that’s why the show has such a huge following among twenty-somethings: the whole premise is these women are “almost, kind of getting it together.” I’m not sure if there’s a better catchphrase for being a young adult.
I’m cobbling together an identity, too, just like them. While none of the women on the show are in college anymore, they face the questions that I feel like come at me at least once a week. “What are you going to do after college?” and maybe silently, “When are you going to grow up?”
A lot of the time, I do feel like Hannah, who has protested to various characters throughout the series, “I AM a grown-up.” I imagine as she says these words, as I’ve said them before, how it feels like an Olympic gymnastics event trying to prove thereafter that you are an adult. All eyes on you, but everyone’s silently waiting for you to fall off the balance beam to then affirm that no, you aren’t really an adult yet.
What are the stakes of taking your time to get your life together? I guess part of the problem is a growing sense of frustration from whoever happens to be your personal audience. I want to grow up, but I also like knowing I haven’t been anything but young. I’m in a liminal sweetspot: I can still go to a concert on a Tuesday night and dance around carefree and then the next day respond eloquently to the reading assignment in class.
Growing up should be a balancing act. Just like in the show — I’m hoping it doesn’t all rush together in the last few episodes — growing up is a gradual process. In fact, it’s 10 steps forward and 20 back. You learn as you go. You make mistakes and regret buying that $20 T-shirt, but then you remember to eat breakfast and pay your water bill on time.
And I’ve come to learn the people watching me grow up will either understand or they won’t. Life isn’t a TV show, but there’s comfort in knowing I’m the one in charge of my character development. I’m the director, screenwriter and performer. And for those who are watching, I would like to say, stay tuned. To quote Dorothea Lasky’s poem, “I am the horse that you should bet on.”
