New Girl

    I plopped on the all-too familiar couch with a particularly strong oomph. It had been a long day, with an even longer set of commitments approaching in the horizon. 

    “What should we watch,” I raised to the room, the room in question being my friend Casey and I. 

    Peering at me through the side of her peripheral, I know the words that will fall out of her tongue before she even utters a breath.

    “New Girl?” I see a cheeky smile flash across her cheeks. But it doesn’t take me more than a second to answer her proposition.

    “That sounds perfect.” I say with a smile, a sigh of contentment resting on my chest. 

    Before any discourse about the episode of choice can ensue, the remote’s force brings us upon the common scenery of Season Four. I begin to voice my thoughts when my silent words are cut off by a frustrated utterance.

    “We always watch the Gay Nick episode, we can’t watch it again.” 

    It should be a surprise, her intuition of my mind, but with the stats I have on that episode, it wasn’t. Regardless, all it takes is one ounce of protest to get Casey to change her mind. Soon enough, we are mouthing along the lines to the beginning of the episode, infectious giggles infiltrating the room around. 

    My eyes lock in as I watch Jess command Nick with the two famous words any reputable New Girl fan would know. 

    “Nick, you're gay.” I can’t help but let a laugh escape. “Be gay. Be gay. Be gay.” Casey and I are falling out of our seats already. 

    “Be… gay?” Nick replies, his expression a muddled blend of disbelief and irritation. By now, it’s full-on laughter coating the room, Nick’s innocent confusion too adorable not to. The lengths I watch Nick go to for Jess have always been a thought of note. Though they are not together for a large amount of the show, the love he has for her never fails to shine through. There’s a certain beauty in that, I think. 

    I stop myself before I dive deeper into a hole that the seemingly innocent string of thought leads to. It wasn’t too long ago that I had chased that exact thought down, extracting meaning from it in a way that I don’t think I was meant to. Only four months prior did my friend raised the question to me, “Is New Girl our biggest enemy?” as we sat huddled together in the UMMA cafe, giggling at the visit of yet another turmoil that I had seemingly conjured for myself. The absurdity behind our laughs came from a culmination of months tainted by angst, tension, and anxiety; I am surprised it didn’t happen sooner. The story begins earlier that year, as the last final weeks of the semester were approaching, and I found myself participating in the encampment that University of Michigan students had established on the Diag. 

 

    During this period, the wrath of finals loomed large, and I spent my days immersed in the brightly lit, bustling environment of the Fishbowl – Angel Hall’s Courtyard Computing Site, known best by students for its rows of Macs and PCs. Nights became a different challenge altogether, as I would retreat to the confines of my tent, curling up tightly to fend off the frigid temperatures outside. A few hours later, I would arise as the sounds of the camp coming alive began to infiltrate my tent. Many days, I would hide the world from my shaded glasses as I scurried home, desperately seeking a hot shower to wash off the crust of the day. 

    As the cherry on top of what had already been a tumultuous week, my remaining energy was devoted to compartmentalizing a heartbreak I had been hit with only a few days prior. Eventually, though, I made it through. Finished the finals I had, said goodbye to the beauty of the encampment, and headed back to New York City for a much-needed reset. At some point, the hours I spent poring over melancholic lyrics dwindled to minutes, and soon I had put what had been a uniquely challenging week of my life behind me. And so, I thought, that was the end of it. But come the summer, and the following semester back at Michigan, I realized just how wrong I truly was. 

   I have always been an out of sight, out of mind person. Since I was young, that has always been one constant in how I handle difficult situations: that is, through avoidance. So, when I moved to Washington, D.C. for the summer, fresh off the antics of what had been one of the hardest weeks of my life, I was filled with optimism about the endless possibilities that my new yet temporary beginning may bring. I hadn’t realized at the time, though, that she would be there too; I quickly learned that when you run away from your problems for too long, it doesn't end well when those problems are no longer out of sight. Even still, for the rest of the summer, I kept running. It can be a blessing when you are seeing someone within your friend group, as it makes it all the more likely that you can spend time with all your favorite people at once. But it can also be a curse – and that summer, it definitely felt like a curse. I resigned myself to the fact that I was now a recluse. Though placing myself into my own isolation went against every fiber of my being, it felt better than the alternative; at the time, at least.

    Going back to school in the fall came with its own set of challenges. Though I had convinced myself things would be different – that I would be different – it is hard to make any progress when you keep making the same mistakes. It is embarrassing, really, the amount of time it took for me to become a normal-functioning person. For months, the sight of her would send panic coursing through my veins, dread marked clearly across my eyes. I didn’t know why it made me so anxious, and it frustrated me to no end being unable to source the feeling. Eventually, I made my peace with the situation. I was doing my best, and for now, that had to be enough. 

    But even after I had settled that, in the back of my mind, a nagging thought would always persist; my mind, somehow, would always manage to go back to Nick and Jess. I would think about how much the two cared about each other, so much so that they seemed to always put their own feelings aside for the sake of the other. I would think about how, even though they were so deeply, consumedly, beautifully in love with each other, when they broke up, they were still there for each other. I would think about my own growing pains of adjusting to a friendship that was once so much more and imagine what that felt like for Nick and Jess, managing a magnified version of the same hurt. And at some point, I concluded that was what it meant to truly care about someone – selflessly and unconditionally, because you just can’t bear to do anything else. 

    I began to wonder, then, whether my inability to face her was an inconsiderate act on my part. Without even trying, I had managed to taint every shared space we had, bringing my own air of uncomfortability as a reckoning force that consumed both of us. Suddenly, the truth I was so assured of began to fade, and alongside the process of healing, I started to experience waves of guilt, as nauseating as the motion sickness I always face on long drives – relentless and impossible to shake. I could never quite figure out why I felt so, for lack of a better word, shitty about the seemingly ill terms of our dynamic. I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to be, right? The only way I could rationalize it, move even an inch towards understanding, was concluding that I must have taken it as an invalidation of the feelings I once had, tainting it in a way. As if what we had become overshadowed what we once were, to me at least. But as I watched the same scenes flash on my screen, months later, there wasn’t even a trace of my hauntings. All I felt was… admiration.

 

    I was shaken back to the comfort of Casey’s couch as I heard her erupting giggles take over my thoughts. We had reached the part of the episode where Nick, now navigating the boundaries of his newly assigned sexuality, dives headfirst into his invented backstory, arguing with Jess over the boxes he insists “we gay men hate.” I can’t help but marvel, once again, at the lengths he’ll go for her. No questions asked, he shows up. But the way I used to interpret that love, the way it once spoke to me, had shifted. I could still feel the depth of his affection, humming through each line and gesture. Yet the idea that, because Nick, a fictional character, could remain so present for Jess even after their romantic end, I should be able to do the same? The thought struck me as wholly absurd now, laughable even. 

    I racked my brain, entering and exiting even the tiniest confines of my mind, trying to find some sympathy for the logic I once held true. I thought back to that era of my life and how, for lack of better words, brutal it truly was. I still can’t fully trace the path my own persona took over those months, oscillating between moments of genuine peace and a gut-wrenching sense of being misunderstood. To say I was all over the place would be an understatement. Maybe then, grasping onto the ideal laid out for me by Nick was my path back to rationality. I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing, what I should have been doing – what was the right thing to do. It was my first attempt at heartbreak – my first attempt at navigating feelings I had never had to entertain before. Maybe then, the reason the show hit so hard back then, managing to infiltrate my deepest corridors, was because of my desperation for a blueprint, something, or someone, to tell me what to do with all the lingering love I still had. And Nick, Nick gave me that. For Jess, he showed up, each time, even when it hurt, and I hated that I could not do the same. 

    For so long, I was a runner. I ran from the things that made me uncomfortable, the feelings I didn’t want to face, and the truths that I couldn’t handle. As I watched Nick immerse into his gay persona, going so far as to plant a kiss on his best friend, I realized I wasn’t plagued with the same shame and frustration I once was. Because in those moments of the past, even though I may not have realized it at the time, I ended up cementing myself into a space where I darkened the sight I had of myself. I think now it wasn’t just avoidance—it was erasure. I didn’t just step away from hard truths; I rewrote them, recasting myself in roles I thought were more palatable, more “normal,” safer. I started to see myself through the lens of what I thought I should be, not who I was. And when I couldn’t live up to that illusion, it left me feeling fractured—like I was constantly disappointing someone, even though it was almost always just myself. Watching Nick now doesn’t ignite that old tension, because I’ve stopped trying to deny that part of me exists. I’ve stopped being afraid of what it might mean.

    Now, as I watch Jess attempt to quiet the fears of her temporary man, convincing both him and herself that Nick is just her roommate, a friend at the most, I don’t see the same shame and frustration in myself that I once did. Instead, I am filled with a new recognition: we are not the same. No longer is Nick my blueprint, or Jess a symbol of everything I thought I had to be. The lens I once viewed them through—blurred by longing, fear, and the ache of unreciprocated emotion—has cleared. I still laugh when I watch them. I still care. But they no longer haunt me.

    I used to think I was weak for running away from her, from the mess I made, from the truths I didn’t want to face. But maybe I wasn’t weak. Maybe I just didn’t know how else to protect myself. Frank O’Connor was right—there is regret in going against your nature. And I’ve done that more times than I can count. But maybe it’s also in that regret that we start to learn what our nature really is. I’ve learned that anxiety doesn’t make me fragile. It just means I feel things deeply. That I care. That I anticipate, that I think ahead, that I want to get it right. It’s not something to outrun—it’s just part of who I am. I may always be someone who has to avoid those heart-wrenching pangs in my chest. I may always have to take immeasurable amounts of space that seem irrational to an outside eye. I may always be an awkward figure in the face of tension, unable to splay a fake smile that would ease the anxiety I create for myself. 

    But I see now, in my evolved interpretation of Nick and Jess’ tumultuous relationship, that who I am is not something to outrun—it’s something to live with, to understand, to soften into. And maybe that’s the point. Healing didn’t look like what I thought it would. It didn’t mean showing up for someone the way a character once did, or pretending I was okay just because time had passed. It meant sitting with the discomfort. Letting it sting. Letting it pass. It meant knowing that I can love someone, miss someone, mourn something, and still choose myself in the end. That maybe the bravest thing I’ve done is stop running; not toward anyone else, just toward me. The way New Girl once clung to my chest, as a source of strange comfort, a mirror, a metaphor, and a warning sign all at once – that version of it has faded. What’s left is just a show that I love. 

 

    As I watch the episode closeout, the remnants of the standards it once created for me fading with it, I feel a new sense of peace. The frustrations of Jess’s new man at her complicated relationship with Nick, as he exclaims the fact we all know, “clearly, he would do anything for you,” now manage to bring a soft smile to my face. I have no doubt that the love the two hold for each other will always be something I adore, a special kind of connection that I hope for myself one day. But whichever way I get there, even with all the various oddities and quirks beaded into my lining, will be okay. It’s enough for me now to bask in their story without needing to follow its path. And as the screen fades to black, I realize: I don’t need a blueprint anymore. I’m learning how to write my own.