What I learned from #BH90210, then & now

"Maybe going back is just what we need to move forward."--Tori Spelling

I look at the above photo and I am instantly transported back in my mind to a simpler time, when I could look out at the world and dream of how I wanted my life to be, before it had really begun.  I was a young, impressionable, very naive teenager living in the backwoods of the Northern California wine country.  Despite my parents' efforts to expose me to the wider world through travel, trips to the city to visit museums and see professional theater, I still had a very inexperienced view of the world about me.  A lot of it came from my taking in the current television shows and pop culture available to me at the time.  Back then, we didn't have cable or a wide access to as many stations as there are today, we only had about 5 channels to view, unless you count the grainy barely able to come in channel 11, which sometimes played the same shows as channel 7 congruently, then we had six channels.  But I digress...

Also, the Internet had yet to truly take off, so as I said above our scant access to TV, magazines, radio, the daily paper were our guide to navigate how to live in the culture of the day. 

All this to say, that we all have the tendency to look back with fondness at our past experiences.  After the hardships and wounds from the bitter slings of arrow have healed to become forgotten, we only have in our mind the happier times, the old jokes come back and make us laugh until tears spring to our eyes.  We want to reach out, re-connect with the old faces that peopled those times.

This year I have had the fortunate experience of revisiting with different facets of my past selves and for a variety of reasons been able to heal myself at those different ages, learn from them, release their wound, and travel forward with a new lightness of being.  Through different circumstances that I was brought into this year, I have visited with my 27 year old self, my 23 year old self, and my 15 year old self.  At each level, they have expressed a degree of hardship as I truly relive those painful times of doubt, insecurity, nonacceptance of who I am by being surrounded by those that do not allow me to truly be myself. 

However, the most heartbreaking was sitting with my 15 year old self after the passing of Luke Perry last March.  Luke Perry, for those who are unaware, played Dylan McKay on the nineties smash hit TV show, Beverly Hills, 90210.  Like many a fan girl of the era, I loved, adored, and crushed on him, plastering my walls with his face, vacillating between making him my object of worship or turning my attention to that of Jason Priestly.  (Ultimately, the pendulum always swung back to Luke, as I am and always have been a sucker for the bad boy.)

His loss was a major blow that felt as if a piece of my childhood had died, gone forever.  A bit of that naive outlook at life forever vanquished due to the reality of life's fragility and ultimate end.  Even though we know death is inevitable, when faced with the reality of it through the loss of someone dear, however the level of attachment, it still stings like a bitch!

So, I sat with my 15 year old self, watching the tears stream down her face, her body wracked with sobs.  She was not as easy to resolve as the 23 year old self who merely wanted to hang out with a boy she used to date of which the church had forbade or the 27 year old self who was comfortable to sit in the cafe by herself, healing the wounds of neglect from that time period.  My 15 year old was still very much a child, with no real understanding of the duties of life, unlike the twenty something selves who had experiences being a grown up. 

I've written in a previous blog from last March about my experience bringing healing to my 15 year old self, so I won't go any further with that story line.  What I do want to focus on is the desire we all have to look back with fondness and the lessons we can glean from doing just that. 

When expressing my excitement about the reboot of #BH90210 over the last few months, I have experienced some judgment from others based on the cast 'going back' and even my own fascination with the past.  But, if we were all to be truly honest with ourselves, we all look back with rose-colored glasses and all experience the same judgment from others.  This judgment is not necessarily a bad thing as a true friend can remind us of the negativity of that time period that our happy hindsight blinds us to forget. 

So, its as Tori Spelling said in the first episode of the reboot, "Maybe going back is just what we need to move forward."  In going back, we can examine every aspect of our past and find the healing to begin again. 

Its in that that I express the reasoning behind my excitement of #BH90210.  For many years, I expressed shame over my teenage obsession with Beverly Hills, 90210, to my own detriment.  I was not honoring my 15 year old self, not honoring all of who I was and ultimately who I am.  By doing so now, by proudly displaying a revised section of my closet with magazine cutouts of the cast, I am allowing a part of me, once hidden, to come forth.  And, this is not only reserved for the part of me that fixated on '90210, but all of me, warts and all, as they say. 

I accept all of it, with pride.  I accept the hard years of depression, outbursts of anger, and the happy years of celebration.  Its all made me who I am today and continually shapes how I define my path towards my destiny.  By looking back, I find the ability to not only heal, let go, but have complete pride in myself.

To quote Kelly Taylor from the original series of 90210, when faced with the choice of either Dylan or Brandon (as reflection of many a fan girl including me), she smiled with strength upon them and said,

I choose me!

Like Kelly Taylor, I do the same.  I choose me.  All of me, of all time, forever.  I choose me.

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