i *had* to write about dawson's creek. i apologize for being so locquacious today... this is entry number 3 of the day. but i just had to. i have written a few entries going all the way back to 2000 about how i related so well to those kids from capeside. and i did, sometimes. sometimes i felt if i could become any more joey-esque they might have just come and found me and interviewed me for some writing tips. (they definitely could have used writing tips from *someone* towards the end-- the show went at a good time.)

the truth is, i think we all have a little joey potter in us. we all put on this front that we are confident and have direction in life, when really, we have no idea what we're doing, and we're so scared to make the choice that is right in front of us.

i wanted to pretend that loving mark was the answer. but it wasn't. it was me hiding from myself, me being stuck as an 18 year old who had forgotten what it was like to trust anyone. i clung to him like an anchor, never realizing (or not wanting to realize) that anchors sink, and that i was going down too. and by the time i realized it, i was too scared to let go.

so like joey, it is time for me to grow up. it is time for me to stop spending my wednesday nights inside watching a television show and looking for answers about my life. it is time for me to go out and live it. i always have said that "i need a pacey." well i do. i need someone who loves me like that. but i also have to go out into the world so i can find him, or so he can find me. i need to stop trying to undo the past, and start trying to do the present.

i constantly live life looking backward. everything recalls a memory, a decision, a feeling that i had before. and what i could have done, or what i wanted to happen. and when i get out of that mindset, its about the future. who i'm going to be when my life is magically settled. i used to think this magical settlement would come around by the time i was 18, that it would descend upon me like some great ray of light. but it didn't come. at 18, or 19, or 20. and the difference is i've stopped pretending that i ever will. life doesn't work itself out, you work life out yourself.

in spite of everything i still believe. i still hope and wish that somewhere somehow someone exists that will love me, the way that pacey loves joey, in that "you complete me" kind of way. i still think that someone will one day think that the world is somehow different and better because i am in it, and love me for it. and maybe one day that dream will come true. i hope it will.

but i can still be me without it.

so, even though it was highly over-stylized, at times horribly acted, and horribly written, i just want to thank the cast of dawson's creek for making my wednesday nights even more self-introspective and brooding than they might have otherwise been over the past six years. i thoroughly enjoyed the self-indulgence of sitting on the couch or getting together with friends to rehash the latest pacey stunt or joey goof-up. i think i learned a lot. maybe not from the show, but it was always there in the background.

not to mention, they pulled off a great ending in spite of it all. you always like to see a show end the way you want it to. some things do work out. and that is a good thought.

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