My niece is nine years younger than I. Every summer, we have a tradition of starting a series which we would watch every night with our tea and coffee. Last summer, it was Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Even if my niece and I have almost a decade-long age difference, we are still girls. Our emotions are at the mercy of our hormones; we love love, we understand how a girl can fall deep and heavy for her childhood crush, and how hard she can try to make it work against all odds. We know how a girl is attracted to the aura of mystery around an emotionally unavailable guy; we know how almost every time it’s just therapy that can unravel that mystery, and finally, we are both suckers for a good love triangle set against the backdrop of a beautiful beach house and summer fantasy.
So, whenever the ocean blue colour would appear on our screen, with sounds of glitters and sparkles, a sweet mix of excitement and bliss would run through us, the start of yet another The Summer I Turned Pretty episode.
This year, even with the chaos of my internship and personal life, I made time to complete this show’s finale. I liked how the season climaxed and wrapped itself, and it was a relief to see that the main characters, Belly and Conrad, chose each other again. I got my Happily Ever After. But I wasn’t happy.
Initially, I thought I was tired physically and emotionally because of long working hours and not getting enough sleep, but that wasn’t true.
In each episode of the final season, I saw how Belly experimented with her life. She made mistakes that affected not only her but also some very close people around her, yet she kept going. After her wedding to Jeremiah is called off, Belly runs away to Paris and decides to build a life there. Conrad, on the other hand, mends his broken relationship with his brother, Jeremiah, when his final realisation that he cannot live without Belly leads him to cancel the wedding.
Conrad then begins to express himself to Belly through sweet handwritten letters. He even visits her in Paris and talks to her about their past relationship. This is the same guy who would pretend to forget Belly’s birthday and not give her a gift, yet is now sending her love letters from another country.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t happy to see this beautiful coming together of childhood love; there would be a heaviness in my chest that would only grow a little heavier with every moment of this union. Why, even I asked myself.
The Summer I Turned Pretty showed me a world that I secretly love and wish for, but I know it doesn’t exist. It kept transporting me into Belly’s life, which was all about making bold decisions, standing by them, and running away from them (which was necessary for her growth), all the while the guy she had loved and adored was getting himself therapy and working hard to win her back. This life, Belly’s life, is pretty as a summer afternoon spent lying in a hammock tied between two dense trees with a novel in hand, except that such an afternoon doesn’t usually come.
I wanted to have a Conrad moment. I wanted a Conrad to apologise to me; I wanted a Conrad to send me handwritten notes; I wanted a Conrad to come to me and talk through every misunderstanding we ever had. I wanted a Conrad who would not give up on me like I wouldn’t on him.
Belly irked me too because no matter how many mistakes she made and how selfish she acted, she still got the ‘guy’. As my anger grew with each episode, I realised that I wasn’t angry with Belly; I was just disappointed in myself for not being courageous enough to make mistakes too. I always treaded with so much caution that when I saw someone exploring herself, I judged her. It was my insecurity that came out as my anger.
Reality works differently. In the real world, you have to live with the ache of the past and make sense of why it happened at the same time. You have to forgive the other person, forgive yourself, forgive the timing, and forgive your circumstances. You have to heal not to look back but to look forward; your Connie never comes back, and maybe that’s ok. Maybe that’s better. Maybe that’s the only way to grow.
This feeling of wanting something yet knowing that it doesn’t work this way was my answer to the ache in my chest. I don’t blame the show; it’s written by a woman who would like lovers-reuniting fantasy, but it’s a trope that carries a soft spot in my heart, or maybe, in several broken hearts that watched it. However, as the girl who also believes in happily-ever-afters, I know that one day this ache will go away and something beautiful, something peaceful, like my hammock-in-two-trees afternoon, will replace it.