*Warning: Some major love for Girls ahead*

Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” has been running through my head since last night after watching the series finale of Girls. My desire to feel and embody the sadness of the song was satiated thanks to Spotify.  I listened to it on repeat too many times than I’d like to admit to today—thanks, Lena Dunham. I listened repeatedly to summon my tears; I was almost on the brink of doing it, but I had to stop for a slice of veggie pizza on my way home and it would have looked ridiculous if I had walked in wiping tears away.  I just wasn’t in the mood to face the judgmental eyes of my regular pizza guy (this kinda sorta unintentionally rhymes). Why, you ask, was I hoping for a stream of tears? Because I was hoping for the sweet catharsis and utter satisfaction that comes with the release of a damn good cry.

It’s because last night was the end of Girls or what felt like the end to my overextended adolescence, but most importantly it was that realization of holy-shit-I’m-almost-30-and-I-still-haven’t-moved-to-Brooklyn, and that I have yet to attend a warehouse party in Bushwick. YEAH, I KNOW. Please stop judging me for a second and hear me out. Sure, I KNOW, it’s like, what-in-the-hell-is-wrong-with-me? It’s hard to imagine that one could be so affected by a fantastically written television show (Sunday night HBO programming, nonetheless), but alas, here I am, affected. Stories, in any form as we all know,  can reflect upon you like a mirror. It shows you things about yourself you may not want to see and sometimes, on very rare occasions, it perfectly expresses the sentiment that life is not always what you think or thought it will or would be, and sometimes emotional pain is too much to bear, but fuck it—-we’re all in emotional pain our entire lives, as mama Horvath says, and you just have to fucking deal with it. You can either move along and continue to march to the beat of your own drummer, or you can run out and away from it all, having forgotten to pump your breast milk.

I’m sad. And listening to “Fast Car”, which by the way if you don’t know (and I’ve causally forgot to mention), was the song of choice for the finale episode of Girls. It’s beautiful and comforting in the sadness it expresses. Plus, I can’t quite get over the beautifully unique voice of Tracy Chapman. I can’t seem to get the mimic down no matter how hard I try or for how long I sing into the mirror while the song plays. The song—it’s the thought of driving towards your dreams but knowing that you’ll never get there because it’s a dead end or a one way street. Fuck. The tears are welling up again.

Putting all of this aside for a second, my sadness also stems from the end of a relationship, not with a man, but with a television show. A show that has for five long years been a source of familiarity, laughter, a mirror to which my millennial cohorts and I reflected on our post-collegiate life of ups and downs and trying to figure out who the fuck we are, what we fuck we want out of life, and the deep fear of never actually getting it. In other words, it represents what we may never be and we all just have to be fucking OK with it. And oh yeah, I’m turning 30 soon and I’m faced with the existential crisis of realizing that some of the decision that I make now can affect the course of my life. I am one of the most indecisive people you will ever meet, by the way. It’s also realizing that the idea of something is not the same as actually doing, and that sometimes those two things never quite mesh the way we had hoped.

It’s scary to face or think about coming into yourself, and of age, and of leaving pasts behind that you’ve outgrown, subsequently turning into another person, and eventually reproducing extensions of your self. I watched Hannah go through it, albeit fictionally on television, and it’s scary: We older millennials are getting older and it’s not all Bushwick warehouse parties and tattoos and crack spirit guides—it’s more than that. It’s more than all the drunken nights out and coming home at the crack of dawn and functioning the next day after having one too many tequila shots. We’re getting older, and some of us are starting to have kids, who are not named Grover? Please do not name your child Grover.

The end of this beloved series (at least for me) coincides with the theoretical end to my own view of myself as a young adult as I close out my 20’s in a few short months.  With all of the show’s criticism and privilege that some of the characters had, it was all-too real and relatable to my particular cohort. It was a mirror for my 20’s, to all the mistakes I’ve made, all the friends I’ve gained and lost, and all the nights out in Billyburg that ended either at Alligator Lounge or Bagelsmith.  I will miss the reflection of that part of my youth staring right back at me.

Excuse me while I go hop into a Fast Car and head into my future.