At 14 years old, I was officially over high school and everything that came with it.

Yes, I had just started freshman year, but I was not convinced that the next four years in Twinsburg, Ohio, a small, suburban town, would bring what I was looking for at the time: the perfect friend group, the ultimate social life, the ideal health.

I decided I was just there to get the necessary education so that I could go to college. I would get in and get out. I had dreams, gosh dang it, and I wanted to get to work on achieving them.

Education has always been a pillar of my life, but in school, I had a hard time finding people whom I related to. And it seemed like everyone else could make friends in an instant.

In the midst of health struggles that I dealt with from a young age, I had to mature quickly. Because of this, I often felt years ahead of those I was surrounded with at school.

One day in gym class, when I was around 12 years old, I stood there, exasperatedly looking around at my peers.

“How nice must it feel,” I thought, “to have so much brain space and energy to be this upset about your team losing the kickball game?”

Meanwhile, all I could think about was how exhausted I was from my infusion the week before and why I was being forced to expend the little energy I had on playing what I thought was the stupidest game ever invented.

I would go home after these long days and rant to my mom and dad — the only people who seemed to understand. As a result, I became very close with the two of them — closer than I had ever been to a friend my age.

The bond my mom and I developed was special. We were two strong women battling life’s inconveniences together through humor and grit. She understood my disconnect from people my age and how I felt about there having to be a reason as to why all the struggles would someday be worth it. She often says that she saw herself in me.

As a kid, she also spent days on end curled up with books, using her imagination to travel to dreamlands. When she was in college, she also wanted to try her hand at every major and every club, and both of us “decided” on multiple different career paths before we landed on the perfect one.

In general, each of us has always been able to see life through the perspective of everything that is possible instead of all that holds us back.

Around the time I began high school, she introduced me to her favorite show, “Gilmore Girls.”

“You were about 14 or 15, and by that time, we had formed such a solid bond and friendship as mother and daughter,” my mom, Lisa Cohen, said. “We had already been through so much together with your health struggles, and it was kind of us against the world.”

A couple of episodes in, I was hooked. The show, which originally aired on The WB and lasted from 2000 – 2007, portrays the mother-daughter relationship between the main characters, Lorelai Gilmore and Rory Gilmore. It follows their lives and relationship as Rory navigates high school and beyond.

For the first time, I saw people on my TV who were just like my mom and me. They had been through so much together, but they were closer because of it. They were funny, smart, witty and kind, but most of all, they were ambitious and constantly working toward something big, no matter what obstacles they faced.

Like me, Rory dreamed of becoming a successful journalist living in a big city, and I got to watch her journey play out while I planned for mine.

Just like that, “Gilmore Girls” became my space to dream. Even more, it encouraged me to make it through high school and all the adversity in my life and, eventually, end up exactly where I belong.

A way to explain our relationship

“My mom and I are freakishly linked,” Rory said in season 5, episode 2.

Every night in 2019, I would come home from school, get my homework done and hop in bed with my mom to watch our show. No matter what kind of day I had or what was going on in life, I could always count on “Gilmore Girls” at the end of the day.

These nights got me through freshman year of high school — a time when I was trying so hard to figure out who I was and what I wanted in life before I really needed to. While “Gilmore Girls” played in the background, my mom and I debriefed on everything going on in our minds.

Both of us are very deep thinkers, sometimes to our disadvantage, and we always seemed to understand what the other person needed.

My mom first watched the show around 2010 when I was about 5 years old, and she said she remembers being drawn to Lorelai’s character, relating to her humor, sarcasm, non-conforming way of living and “how she chose to be a mother — a friend first and then pull the mom card only when necessary.”

“I watched the entire series a few times by myself, and it went from being entertainment to somewhat of a comfort show,” she said.

When the “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” reunion episodes came out in 2016, she subscribed to Netflix just so she could watch. Even after all her rewatches, when she introduced the show to me in 2019, she said she saw it in a whole new light.

“It helped us define our relationship visually,” she said. “Lorelai and Rory were in a similar position and had an eerily similar bond after going through struggles together … It became a way for us to explain the bond we had and what we had been through and still go through.”

Rory is a bookish, awkward, ambitious teenager, and a whole lot like how I was.

“It was uncanny how you and Rory lined up — her love of books, her intelligence, her always welcoming her mom in her daily life. [She and you] never went through the ‘embarrassed by Mom’ teen years,” my mom said. “She romanticized life — she and you, and me at your age, are dreamers and romanticizers with lofty goals and dreams.”

References to the show’s characters and funny lines became a daily occurrence in our house, as well as constantly having the show running in the background while we cooked dinner or relaxed.

An escape

In 2020, we were so invested in the show that we decided to bring our Roku stick to one of my routine infusions so we could watch it on the room’s TV.

After I got hooked up to the IV and my medicine started running, we pressed play. Immediately, it was such a great escape that I forgot I was even in the hospital. The nurses coming in and out gave us funny looks, but we didn’t care.

“This was our time — just the two of us — escaping reality together,” my mom said.

I began to daydream, putting myself and my mom and Rory and Lorelai’s shoes.

My mom and I stepped out of the diner together and walked arm-in-arm down the sidewalk.

“I smell snow,” my mom said as the jingling door of Luke’s Diner closed on our way out. The flakes falling from the sky pecked our cheeks and fell into our hair, but we didn’t mind.

As we walked home, our friends waved to us from the left and the right, and a man played a sweet melody on the guitar from inside the nearby gazebo. It felt like the perfect day.

All of a sudden, I felt a squeeze on my arm. The snow melted instantly, the coffee that was in my hand disappeared and my surroundings morphed into sterile walls.

I was back in my hospital chair, sitting in the small, bland infusion room, and the blood pressure cuff had gone off. A nurse stood in front of me, asking how I was feeling.

At this point, I had been receiving routine infusions for about eight years. Today, it’s been 13 years. To this day, that was one of the best infusion experiences I have ever had.

Rory’s ‘happy ending’

“You’re a romantic,” my mom said when I interviewed her for this piece.

That I am.

As I have gone through journalism school, I’ve had the dream to end up in New York City someday, working for The New York Times and living the “fantasy” life. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my career path is similar to that of Rory’s.

“I saw a lot of parallels with her intelligence and her academics and her eagerness for everything and love of books and her love of writing, and I thought that it was a pretty cool thing to happen because it was unexpected,” my mom said of me choosing journalism.

Rory eventually grows up to take over the Stars Hollow Gazette, the town’s local newspaper.

She ends up in the place where she is most loved and adored — the place that feels right — which leads me to wonder where I will be in the next couple of years.

I’m graduating in May, and I have no idea what lies before me. I’ve made it through so much — I’ve finally developed the deep relationships I craved as a child, I’m healthy enough to be living on my own and taking care of myself and I’m working every day to become the best writer possible. The time has finally come when I get to choose what happens next.

Yet, even with the number of years I spent wishing for this time of my life to just arrive already and dreaming of what I could do if I just had the freedom, the health and the opportunity, I’ve found myself in a position where I don’t know exactly what I want.

And the odd thing is, I don’t think my dream new life lies in a big city. I don’t even think it involves starting a new life at all.

I would much rather build on what I have here, with my mom and family by my side, because there’s so much to do to make up for the lost time I spent sick as a kid. And I believe the most fulfilling moments of my life will come from the relationships I build with the people around me.

Coincidentally, I think I am still following Rory’s path, even if it’s not on purpose.

Just like Rory, I have so much I want to do, and my to-do list is never-ending. But, before I reach the big items, I have much unfinished business here to attend to.

There are so many dreams to still fulfill, experiences to be had and memories to be made before I leave this place. And the best part is, I’ll get to do it all with my mom cheering me on by my side.

Lauren Cohen is a writer. Contact her at [email protected].

Aschertyn Sixt is a designer and illustrator. Contact them at [email protected].