I Just Want to Be "Seventeen"
- Annaya
- Apr 24, 2020
- 4 min read
I've been obsessed with Heathers the Musical since my junior year. I had seen the film years prior when I was on an 80s movie kick, and the dark comedy appealed to my angsty soul that yearned for a life so much more fantastical and important than the one I felt I had. Enter in the knowledge that a musical was based on this amazing film, and I knew I had to check it out.
The cast recording is masterful. It makes me laugh, cry, and think. And while I totally empathized with Veronica falling for the brooding J.D., the musical amped up the appeal for our favorite wannabe mass murderer. Then comes the final song in the musical, "Seventeen (Reprise)," the one that hits my heart every time I hear it, but for a different reason each time.
"Are there any happy endings?"
In this song, Veronica reconnects with Martha, and they and the rest of the student body reflect on the ephemeral nature of youth. The first time I cried about this song, I was devastated by the way youth had been robbed from J.D. by his father's evil and his mother's suicide. The students of Westerburg also had their innocence taken from them by the rash of murders disguised as suicides. As a junior in high school, I felt connected to this lack of youth and innocence. I spent a lot of my childhood sad and anxious because my biological father was like a jack-in-the-box. He popped in and out of my life unexpectedly. Without the age and reflection to tell me that that was his problem, I felt that something had to be wrong with me for this man that was supposed to love me unconditionally to discard me at the drop of a hat. I pushed myself to the brink at school, thinking that if I could just get more straight A's that he would suddenly realize that I was worth loving. I felt that I was a burden on my overworked and underpaid single mother. My life just didn't feel like it was making up for the space that I was taking on the planet. I was in elementary school thinking these thoughts. My childhood was filled with imposter syndrome and tears. I can't make up for that. That's why I felt such an affinity for J.D. and his issues. His might have manifested into violence, but he was still another damaged kid whose parents screwed him over. I could relate.
"We're all damaged, we're all frightened / We're all freaks but that's alright / We'll endure it, we'll survive it"
The next time I cried, I was a senior in high school. It was the end of a lot of great things, and I was devastated. For all its flaws, that school was where I found myself and learned to stand on my own two feet. I realized that I was an absolute fucking delight who was talented and intelligent and driven. It was going to be hard to say goodbye to a school I put 11 years into. I wanted to stop time so I would be able to savor these last moments where I was truly a child and allowed to be such. I was going to be thrown into the adult world where racism, sexism, and homophobia wouldn't be as polite as it was at The Pingry School. Even though I had grown so much since elementary school, I was still worried that I wasn't talented enough to do anything of substance or that I was behind my peers and would never be able to catch up. I empathized with the desperate plea of the song to revel in our youth while we still could. So much of my time was spent trying to grow up as fast as I could that now my youth was over and it seemed like I wouldn't have enough time to mourn it.
"We can be seventeen / Still time to make things right / One day we'll change the world / But let's kick back tonight"
The third time I cried was during the first semester of my first year at Spelman. I was dating this wonderful girl (still am by the way), and she told me she loved me. I wasn't ready to say it back then, but I definitely feel it now. Anyway, I was listening to the Heathers cast recording as I'm wont to do at some point each year, and "Seventeen (Reprise)" came on and the lyrics perfectly captured my feelings. We had tons of time for love and I wanted her to know that I would see this relationship through. Now this song is part of the soundtrack of our relationship, and we're constantly reminded that we're just college kids and shouldn't take things too seriously.
"We can be seventeen / We can learn how to chill / If no one loves me now / Someday somebody will"
The fourth time I cried was right before writing this blog post. I had been kind of emotional today. Who knows what triggered it. Maybe it was the fact that the last quarter of my first year at Spelman had to be spent in isolation. Maybe it was realizing the injustices of the world. Maybe it was the indefinite nature of this pandemic settling onto me. Maybe it was a mix of that and everything else going on in my life. All I know is that I was playing the playlist my girlfriend made for me for my 19th birthday and this song came on and it just hit again. The tears flowed out of my eyes before I even knew what was happening. In these times, I yearn for escapism because I quite literally can't escape. I think people around the world desire their own "seventeen": a time where things don't quite matter as much and things can just be beautiful.
"Let's go be seventeen / Take off our clothes and dance / Act like we're all still kids / Cause this could be our final chance! / Always be seventeen / Celebrate you and I / Maybe we won't grow old / And maybe then we'll never die / We'll make it beautiful"
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