Story by Samantha Chavez // she/her // @sam_denisse

Design by Joanne Tsao // she/her // @jjjooannnee

I grew up sitting too close to the screen, bleary eyes trained on the blue light.

While my mother pulled on my hair to twist it into braids, I would try to ignore the pain and turn my attention to Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street on the television in front of me. I often think of this memory on the rare occasion that I fix my own hair, contemplating who I’ve grown to be. It started here, I think, but I never know how these shows shaped me if at all.

I’m self-aware enough to know I’ve picked up traits from the characters I’ve grown up seeing on screen: my quest for independence, desire for constant adventure, and unrealistic expectations of what perfect relationships look like. My adolescent years were spent developing an infatuation with different television series, obsessions that morphed into connections with other people.

I think stories are a way to communicate, to reach between the space between any two people and find common ground. It feels that way for many of my different relationships, like with my parents, for example.

Growing up, I felt an overwhelming amount of expectations, and it caused stress and created tension between my parents and me. I don’t know for certain, but it seems to me that there are always negative feelings in every relationship, no matter how much love there is. Television, those fictional characters and plots that distract one from reality, was always a lifeline between me and my parents. Sometimes, even as a mature adult who knows how to deal with conflict better than my 13 and 15-year-old self did, it still feels like a lifeline.

For most of my youth, I would sit on my parents’ bed as my mother folded laundry, watching rom-coms like Maid in Manhattan or The Wedding Planner or Lifetime movies that made me grow up slightly paranoid, just like my mother. I’m sure I spent plenty of time doing other things with my mother, but this is the starkest memory I have of our time together.

My father and I would rent Goosebumps episodes from Blockbuster and watch one every Friday night. It was my introduction to the horror genre and felt like the only time I spent with him, time stored in between him working and playing video games with my brother, something of the boys club I was not a part of. When I was fifteen, he recommended watching The X-Files, which became and still is, my favorite tv show. Recently I re-watched it and my obsession with it reignited. I’ll call my father with fun facts about it or to show off my merchandise—a lifeline formed, just like that.

It feels like I forget everything, memories slipping away as the minutes tick by, but through these age-less films and series, I live in the past, in happy moments with people I know or once knew and now only see in plots we once tried to guess.

As a 20-year-old, I can feel lost and alone. It’s comforting to know that many people my age grew up to Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place, just like I did. Sometimes my friends and I will re-watch certain episodes of the television series we watched when we were younger, or listen to the theme songs and dance around our living rooms. On Instagram, people I once knew will post stories of themselves listening to High School Musical, and it feels bittersweet to know we are all nostalgic for simpler times.

In the present, I spend hours talking about the tv show my friend and I are both watching, theorize about what will happen in the next WandaVision episode with my two other friends, and trade recommendations with my best friend who lives thousands of miles away. When I miss people, it’s easier to cross the distance with fun witticisms about what I’m watching.

There is no way to say who will be around in the future, but there are plenty of ways to remember every person who has and will come into my life, the good and the bad times. My preferred method of fondly reminiscing on them is to re-watch something we both once loved, sitting in front of a screen, bathed in blue light.