My dad didn't inhale smoke from a fire but just like Jack Pearson, he died completely out of the blue when I was 17, at the same age as the Pearson kids when Jack passed. My mother was not like Rebecca: she could not contain her grieve. Within weeks, she was barely there in terms of body weight. I did not leave my room for six weeks, never eating more than a dry slice of bread every day. My mother tried to make us do things we used to enjoy, like going to the beach, but it was physically impossible to feel happiness or joy. I can't be sure how much weight I lost altogether but I am assuming about 25 pounds in three months, the same amount Kate gained after her father's death. "Everyone grieves differently", they said. And I know that to be true.
At the end of the summer he died, I had plans to go back to the States and go to college. Like Randall. Instead, I went back to school in Germany to stay close to home. I had to do 12th grade over just in order to stay close. With the condition my family was in, leaving would have been a goodbye forever. And of course, I couldn't do that. I put my dreams on hold to be with those who needed me. Of course, I was 17, I didn't know what I know today: that sooner or later, everything will be alright. "This Is Us" helps to see that. Yes, it is fiction, but it is also true. Randall did go to college in the end. He got more than he probably ever imagined to have. Just like me. This person unwilling to stop crying eventually went to college, for free, traveled the world, and would have made her father, if he was alive, pretty proud.
The Pearson children struggle with the relationship with their parents. I cannot understand the desire to make a parent proud that is dead but I understand all too well what pressure comes with wanting to do the right thing. I am hard on myself because I want to be understood. Like Kevin. A person like me, bubbly and blonde, knows what it's like to be discarded. In uni, I wore fake glasses for my first month at Glasgow just so I wouldn't be "the pretty girl" again. I was one of the best in my class in my undergrad, yet, because I was also into sports, went out to party a lot and got a decent amount of male attention, my professional success was something people did not accept easily. I believe that nobody, except my mother maybe, ever truly believed in me; they certainly did not support me. And that's why getting a job at Amazon felt as good as it felt for Kevin to get a job with Ron Howard: Because it proved everyone wrong.
Somewhere out there, you will find a black blogger who wrote this same piece, describing how this show made them feel understood about the day they entered a white school or being the "first black person" to do anything. I wouldn't know anything about that. I also have no emotional connection to loving someone the way Jack and Rebecca loved each other, or how Rebecca was able to find new love. However, there are many people that do. And they feel like me when they watch this show, too. In the end, it makes me change nothing about myself, it just corroborates my desire to turn feelings into pictures and words like the makers of this show do. I want to work for this show or dedicate my free time to making something this beautiful. In this relatively short life, I have felt so much it is sometimes too much. But then I watch the show and I see that everyone has. Maybe not around me but this struggle is simply called "life". It isn't meant to be easy and we are increasingly getting better at it.
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