Oh, you’re embarrassed because you liked Twilight in middle school? Newsflash! It’s high art now! Drink some chamomile tea and unironically enjoy the Baseball Scene like the rest of us.

Around April or May, I began to notice that it became really hard to find new pieces of media interesting. Sure, there was plenty of new music from current favorite artists, new movies and TV shows, new hobbies—pretty much ‘new’ anything. However, this bombardment of ‘new’ (I’m even sick of saying the same word six times already), especially in this rollercoaster of a uNiT oF tImE, practically made me nauseous. I was tired of keeping up with everything that was more fun when I had actual people to talk to!

So, while wallowing in this vacuum of content, I decided to revisit every piece of media I enjoyed throughout high school.* Most of all, I wanted to see if everything I liked was good in the moment or actually good; in other words, is my current brain rot justified by the quality of the phases in my life I went through?

Long story short: the answer is yes. Oh my God, yes.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that reviving your interests from high school is good, actually. Here is my reasoning:

First, relieving my personal high school experience (I refused to touch anything that had to do with school and/or past classmates) allowed me to be much happier with myself. I’ll admit, the media I consumed as an angsty 14-year-old (cue the Fall Out Boy, early Panic! At the Disco, and My Chemical Romance discographies) wasn’t proper therapy. In other words, at the time, it was angry music for an angry person. But, being stuck in the same house I lived in five years ago, I get it! What else was a 14-year-old supposed to do besides be angry all the time and fall in love with every celebrity that did something cool? We were in that weird phase where we’re not ‘child’ adorable anymore or ‘young adult’ pretty yet, so we look like sweaty aliens; we’re sleep deprived and in high school now; we’re entering the awful stage of puberty; and everything we expressed interest in were most likely going to be made fun of by other people anyway. Of course some would use anime, fantasy TV series, and large franchises to enjoy a little escapism. It makes perfect sense why people (specifically young, teenage girls) would gravitate toward Lorde and MARINA (formerly Marina and the Diamonds). They were harmless forms of making us feel better about losing our minds, and rekindling my love for all this media gave me the same sense of comfort it did when I was younger.

Second, it’s just good to have a sense of familiarity and a stable source of joy when the world is genuinely imploding. For instance, you know what changed way too much and freaked everyone out? The colors of the swing states in the 2020 election. You know what didn’t change? My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. I may have absolutely no clue as to whether or not I’ll ever live on campus this year, but I still have seasons 1-6 of Doctor Who engrained in my puddle of a brain! At this point, why not go back (“to the place where we began”)? Everything is uncertain now, as the cliché goes; might as well distract your mind with One Direction’s “Best Song Ever.”

Third, revisiting my high school phases gave me an unbelievable amount of appreciation for the media I consumed. Now that I’m older, I can say with my whole chest that One Direction will achieve Beatles-status at some point in the future. Why? Because their music is fucking great, and they’re all talented! Panic! At the Disco’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out is arguably one of the best albums ever written—from the lyrics being incredibly smart and fun to sing start-to-finish, to the sound, to the seamless transitions, and to the burlesque drama of it all. Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy) and Hayley Williams (Paramore) absolutely BODIED every song in their corresponding discographies. YA novels, though maybe not the best written, were fun to read, actually. My biggest regret when I grew apart from these things was never taking a step back and actually just appreciating things for what they were—art for art’s sake, you know?

Being an adult and going through the same phases again just made me realize how dumb it was to be self-conscious about harmless things that made me happy.  This immersive experiment just taught me that we don’t have to be so perfect, cool, and serious all the time, and that we’re allowed a little room to indulge ourselves in fun, silly content. While I definitely have grown out of some of my interests and still struggle to admit some phases of my life, it was nice to see what stuck with me and helped me become who I am now. It made me realize that not going through any of these phases would have made me extremely boring. And that, to me, is much worse than admitting I treated Infinity on High like the fifth Gospel of the New Testament.

As a final thought, I think it’s unfair to call this going back to your high school interests “regressing” simply because it’s not. Nowadays, there seems to be a narrow definition of ‘progress’—not looking back to the past, only going up, being in constant change (insert more futuristic buzz words popular in the 1910s here). However, I don’t think it’s bad to stop trying to think about the “future” and “goals” and “where I see myself in five to ten years” and start considering, “How did I get here?” This may be the history major (and reformed emo) talking, but the past has a lot of value, and reliving good moments can provide an unexpected amount of happiness and appreciation for both yourself and the things that made you feel seen. It’s going back simply to learn, not forget, which I think is what most people who haven’t looked at their past selves have misunderstood. In a way, reliving high school phases is a kind of progress; it’s just one that’s reliant on analyzing the past.

So yes, revisiting your “cringey” high school phases is good, actually. It’s a good way to press pause, come to terms with yourself and personal growth, and just find at least a gram of happiness in this otherwise life-draining year.

*Note: If I don’t mention your interests, just replace all of mine with yours to make it applicable.

“I Tried Using a Picture of Weird Kid Oasis from the Early 2000s, But Copyright Law Was Being Pretentious” (by Fall Out Boy) via Corey Coyle/Panoramio