Reflection

    Rewatching these shows—Friends, New Girl, and How I Met Your Mother—started off, as most rewatches do, as comfort. A way to soften the edges of long days, to let someone else’s chaos fill the room instead of my own. But it quickly became something else: a mirror. These were no longer just sitcoms I knew by heart. They were maps of how I’d once viewed the world, and how I see it now.

    Friends reminded me of the version of myself who equated success with sacrifice, who wore exhaustion like a badge of honor. It was only in Chandler’s unraveling that I saw the permission I had been too afraid to grant myself: to question, to pivot, to not have it all figured out. New Girl gave language to something even murkier—the quiet grief of growing apart from someone you once loved deeply. What once felt like a blueprint for how to “do” post-breakup friendship transformed into something softer, a recognition that letting go doesn’t make the love any less real. And How I Met Your Mother—the one I avoided finishing for years—finally forced me to confront my complicated relationship with endings. I realized that my fear wasn’t about things changing; it was about not knowing who I’d be after they did.

    Together, these shows formed the backdrop of my own immersion memoir—not just a return to narratives I loved, but a return to former versions of myself. Each rewatch brought with it a different read, shaped by where I was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. They offered me a safe space to feel the things I hadn’t yet had the courage to name: burnout, heartbreak, nostalgia, longing, and hope.

    In hindsight, I think I needed them. Not to guide me, not even to comfort me—but to remind me that growth doesn’t always look like triumph. Sometimes it looks like sitting in your uncertainty. Sometimes it looks like laughing at a line you’ve heard a hundred times and realizing, for the first time, that you no longer see yourself in it. And sometimes, it just looks like finally clicking “play” on the finale you’ve been avoiding, and discovering that you’re okay.

    Because you’re not who you were the last time you watched it. And that, in its own quiet way, is everything.