this is the way, is the way that we live

Tonight I watched The L Word's season finale. I don't know what I expected, but (forgive the spoilers, I assume if you haven't seen it yet, you're not going to) they definitely get catharsis points for finally killing Jenny Schecter.

This was the show's sixth season. The pilot episode aired on January 18th, 2004. I didn't start following the show until the spring of 2006, which is when season 3 was beginning. I played catchup with seasons 1 and 2 that summer, and was pretty much hooked.

I've seen those first three seasons countless times, and they certainly carry connotations of the beginning of a relationship that's over now, which is kind of strange to think about.

I remember watching season three, curled up on the tan leather couch on Sunday nights, never able to make it through an episode without being distracted by each other. We were seventeen, tiny, scared of going to college, and ferociously in love.

The seasons continued to air and develop more and more ridiculously through our first and second years of college. This was before they went online legally, in high definition, and we would call each other with YouTube links to the most recent episode, watching pirated ten-minute segments in the few hours before they got taken down. The portrayal of queer people, and the drama in general, became more and more unrealistic, but I continued to watch because we all did. Love it, hate it, or fall somewhere in between, but the bi, lesbian, curious, and questioning girls all watched The L Word.

We aged, both of us, and I only feel it now, looking back across time. Watching the finale was certainly sweeping, and I am sure that it moved me more because of how faithful I've been to the show. I certainly never imagined that I would be watching it alone in an apartment in downtown Lyon. I am twenty, not at all tiny, living in a foreign country, noting a profound dissociation between the past and the present. To paraphrase, that was the past, and this is the present. I am no longer the person who lived in that past.

But tonight, ah, tonight brings these things back, perhaps in sharper focus that I would like.

The river moves like glass under the streetlight. I ache, for many things but primarily to be curled in bed with a glass of tea and a book, at the moment.

Listening to: You Are the Best Thing // Ray Lamontagne
Reading: The Fellowship of the Ring // J.R.R. Tolkien