Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 64

Remind me for our next Flash Fiction series not to choose a story with a plot that’s Mad World level complex. Thanks.

ANYWAY.

No spoilers, but I thoroughly enjoyed every second of Stranger Things, Vol 2 last night. I started rewatching Vol 1 at about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, so that it would finish just after 8 so I could right from Vol 1 to Vol 2 with only breaks for the bathroom, drink refills, and snacks. I finished at about 11:30. I was thoroughly entertained. I was practically on my feet for 75% watching it like I watch the Phillies. Completely stressed, going back and forth between pacing, cheering, crying, and freaking out.

I cannot wait for the finale — but I’m also sad because I’ve loved this show for so much of what I consider my “adult” life — I started watching just after I started subbing and grad school back in 2016.  And this show is so linked to who I was at that point in time — I was still going out all the time with my best friend, Lauren, and our crew went to our favorite Philly pub for pub quiz nearly every week. We knew the whole staff there (the pub quiz host was Lauren’s wedding DJ). The server started raving about Stranger Things, and Lauren and I were like — we should watch this. I went home that night to do some grad reading — as I always left homework for 1 AM on a Thursday morning after pub quiz — and put Season 1 on for background music. I’ll never forget sitting at my old, cramped desk with my laptop up for notes, my notebooks covered in tiny handwriting to fit everything, and my Nook tablet set up on the desk as my TV screen. Next thing I knew, it was 4 AM and I was hooked. Lauren had also turned it on and we were both obsessed.

Lauren and I never got around to watching it together — life was so different after 2016. We were both working full-time jobs, and her extra time was for her new husband and mine was for graduate school. One of our other friends got a job in Florida and got married there, and the other got promoted to manager of the supermarket he’d worked at since he was a teenager, so we were always catching up in our group chats on this show and anything else we both loved. I still have our group chat pinned in my phone, and I can go back to see what we all thought about Season 4 — the last one we watched “together”. Lauren passed away a month after that season ended — on August 9. None of us have talked about it in this year’s season in the group chat. We haven’t used it since she passed, and we didn’t start a new one. She was really the glue that held us together, and without her, we’ve drifted away from each other. I still love and adore that group, and I know they feel the same, but it’s just never going to be what it was.

It’s such a weird thing to think about when you’re watching something — but that’s what grief is, right? It’s fresh and hot and burns at first, and then it fades from your every day life. It’s not the first thing you think about when you wake up or the last when you go to sleep. It comes up at holidays and birthdays and moments where you think, Lauren’s supposed to be here. I guess that never goes away, does it? She was 33 when she died. She was supposed to turn 34 that year and 38 this last October. She was supposed to be celebrating her son’s fourth Christmas. And we were supposed to be in a group chat, obsessing about this show we’d always watched. So stupid to think about that, really. Or dwell on it.

Anyway — looking forward to the finale, but not the end of my winterbreak. See you guys tomorrow! I’m not sure what time yet because I have some family plans at some point and they haven’t set the time — so it’ll either be late morning or late afternoon. See you 🙂