When the credits rolled for this film, I wasn’t sure how to feel. I had hyped it up too much perhaps, and listened to too many interviews with the filmmaker, “did I ruin it for myself?” I thought. I had listened to the soundtrack, watched the trailer, heard about a Very Specific Cameo, and through those elements I crafted a very different movie in my head than what is on display here. Leaving the theater in a haze, I felt like a husk floating one inch above the ground. I wasn’t in my body. I was processing and trying to quantify the film in my head with the film that I actually saw. That can’t be how it ended. How is it just… over?

Ten minutes later in the car a thought came to my head. I turned to my partner to tell her and realized the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I began to sob, and I tried to push the sentence out but the breath wouldn’t come. I finally eked it out — “what if I hadn’t?” was all I could say before falling into more sobs. I couldn’t even define what I meant, I couldn’t even find the words, but she knew. She knew because she felt it too.

Growing up queer, there comes an age when you realize you’re different than everyone else in your life. It’s not normal teen angst, it’s not normal late-blooming, it’s something more. It feels deeper and undefinable. Everyone around you seems to know who you are before you do. They know you’re queer, but they don’t want you to be, so they put you in the clothes they want. They push you towards the boys they want you to talk to. They make it very clear they would never want a queer child, knowing those damning words will never leave you. Even the most ‘innocuous’ words — “isn’t that a show for girls?” — root themselves so deep into your psyche, bashing your head every time you dare to peek it out. You start to internalize all of the things that make you different as shame. You apologize for your very existence, you question why you exist at all if this is how you have to feel. This isn’t how it’s supposed to feel, right?

A few days before I left for college, a girl kissed me. What would commence in the following months was nights spent weeping, days spent angry, most of my existence completely confused and riddled with anxiety. It was my first kiss and it was the greatest thing I’d ever experienced — but it was with a girl. Looking back at where I’m at now, I was always an obviously gay kid, but at the time I truly had never thought that was a possibility. Sure my mom was gay, but that’s her thing, not mine. She told me shouldn’t want me to be gay, so I just can’t be. I’ll maybe date a few girls while I’m out of the house at college, but in four years I’ll marry a boy for my family. It’s not real if I don’t think about it. It’s not real if I don’t think about it. It’s not real if I don’t think about it.

It seems that Jane Schoenbrun and I both had our lives changed - for better or for worse - by Tara Maclay.

When I moved away to college, my watch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer lined up perfectly that I was starting season 4 — the season where Buffy goes to college. Diving back into the show it delighted me that a lot of my freshman year experiences were being reflected in the show. This season was also the season where Willow meets Tara. Much like Willow, I was enamored with Tara immediately. She was so soft and beautiful, kind and giving. She also was closed off at first, choked with anxiety and unsure of who she was. While she was self-conscious and nervous, what she did know is that she liked girls. That was the one thing about herself that she never questioned, not for a moment. Through that, she helped Willow realize the exact same thing. As the show went on and she built a life with Willow, she moved into a more confident, maternal role. She was everything I wanted to be. I wanted to be her, and I wanted to be with her. I wanted her life, her love, her everything.

When Tara is killed in the show, so suddenly and unfairly, it was hard for me to reckon with at 18. She was my person. And now she was gone. I mourned her like I would someone I loved. Because I did love her. I do. Even though she was gone, the impact of the show didn’t lessen. Tara had still given me a great gift, because even just subliminally I knew that deep down I could be who I wanted to be. I just had to figure it out myself. I had to allow myself to be happy. I had to allow myself to yearn for the life I so desperately wanted. Shout out Amber Benson. Seeing Tara Maclay herself, even for just a moment, on screen in this movie made me smile. 

Four years later, months after I graduated I met a person named Rachel. The instant she walked into the room we locked eyes and I felt an electric jolt in my body. As we sat in my car all night, I kept thinking, “god, I love her.” In that instant I had found my Tara. The person who made me realize I couldn’t keep denying that part of myself because I didn’t want anything else but her.

7 years and some change later we saw this movie today and as I breathlessly said, “what if I hadn’t?” she must have understood on some level that I meant, “what if I hadn’t met you?” What if I was still clinging to the idea of what my family thinks I should be. What if I was still lying to myself. What if I was slowly choking, running out of air, buried deep underground. What if I hadn’t decided to live? I’m still on my journey, but the gut punch of this film was showing me how lucky I am to have taken the plunge at all. 

I thought this movie was going to be a story of not only realization, but self-actualization. A film about a person having something unlocked inside of them and letting it free. I was expecting a joyous ode to 90s television as it intersects with queer identity. This movie wasn’t not about those things, but it wasn’t about them either. It was a cautionary tale of what happens when you shove the truth about yourself so deep inside it slowly kills you. 

I will be thinking about that ending as long as I live. She saw the TV glowing inside of her, the pink opaque begging to be let out. The seventeen year-old girl who never got to live. There is still time. I hope Isabel figures that out. I’ll dream about her.