The Cringe Is the Point: Why Your Teenage Obsessions Matter

Recently, my best friend and I were reminiscing about the birth of our friendship during our awkward, middle-school era. Now, well over a decade later, we are still best friends navigating the adult world together from two different cities. Over the years, we have bonded over boy bands, a shared chai addiction, our fan-fiction consumption (which evolved into a love for fantasy novels), a mutual obsession with “The Witcher,” a deep love for Thai food, and, at one point, being fully committed to the emo aesthetic. Since then, we’ve outgrown some of these parts of ourselves, and our friendship has left some of these interests in the past (as well as the questionable wardrobe choices). However, we have noticed a spike in dopamine when we give in to these guilty pleasures. So, as we live lives in our mid-twenties, is the key to happiness actually just fully embracing our inner middle school self? Tumblr, being a teenager, and the age of not GAF! Fourteen-year-old me was unapologetically herself—a true Aquarius by nature—and now I am looking back and taking some notes. Whether it was the vibrantly dyed hair, the skinny jeans, or the horribly applied eyeliner, fourteen-year-old me was onto
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