Katherine

I finished Sex and the City last week. I’d been watching it since December, and not to be melodramatic or anything, but no piece of pop culture has torn me apart emotionally and built me back up again like this show has. It just, like, affirmed my sense that people are decent sometimes, and that human interaction isn’t always about getting yelled at by a student for spilling jelly all over the PB&J station in the cafeteria the first time you emerge from your dorm for a non-class-related purpose in a week.

(Major SATC spoilers ahead!)

I wasn’t at college or in my bedroom at home when I watched the last episodes—I was with Carrie. I was in New York with her when she decided to give up her column and move to Paris, and I was in Paris as she slowly realized that her home was in New York with Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte. I cried when Samantha called Carrie a cunt at their last New York meal together, sobbed when Carrie lost her nameplate necklace that she had bought with her friends years ago, and nearly drowned in my tears when Magda kissed Miranda on the forehead after Miranda bathed Steve’s ailing mother and said: “What you did—that is love. You love.”

There are so many scenes from this show that will stay in my mind and heart forever. Like when Carrie finds out that Samantha has breast cancer and grabs her hand at Miranda’s wedding during the “in sickness and in health” part of the vows. Or when Carrie makes a tearful phone call requesting to meet someone we think is Big at “the usual spot” and instead it turns out to be Miranda, with whom she had recently fought. Or when Carrie strokes Charlotte’s hair because Charlotte is upset about not being able to have a baby, or when Carrie thinks about something, or when she holds some random object, because Sarah Jessica Parker holds objects—a bar of soap, a card, a pack of cigarettes—in a way that destroys me. She has a gorgeousness that goes beyond physical beauty.

Listen, I know it’s just a show. But before I saw the whole series, I was slowly losing interest in just about everything. I checked books out of the library and read 100 pages or less before returning them. I became bored during conversations with classmates. Food tasted like cardboard mid-chew. And I stopped writing things in my notebook every day. I don’t know if SATC has cured me of my funk, but it’s definitely halted its progress. Every time I don’t want to get out of bed to go to class or interact with humans, I can feel Carrie Bradshaw’s hands holding my face and her thumbs stroking my cheeks, and it feels more real than anything else. ♦