I Think the Apple’s Rotten Right to the Core

Anyone else soooooo tired after the Fourth of July? I feel like I just got put in an energy suck machine and it has sucked all the energy from my body. I can’t drink enough water, no amount of hot dogs can heal me, and no amount of laying can make me feel rested. I supposed that’s what turning 27 does to a girl. It ain’t how it used to be. And if I owe you a text, I am deeply sorry for that (I have 28 unread messages).

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but the older I get, the more I think about my parents and the choices that they made when they were around my age. I think about the jobs they had, the friends they made, their relationships with their own parents. When I’m with my friends and I’m laughing so hard I think I’m going to cry, I hope they did the same thing on a Friday night in the 90s.

Thanks to a really fun and catchy TikTok dance* to Charli xcx’s song Apple, I keep thinking about that song. The lyrics “I guess the apple don’t fall far from the tree / ‘Cause I’ve been looking at you so long / Now I only see me” (xcx, 2024). I know what you’re thinking — is she EVER going to SHUT UP about Brat??? Honestly, I don’t know. Probably not? But damn… that line got me really chewing on the similarities between my parents and me. I don’t typically let myself go too far down that rabbit hole (too hard) and I’m nothing if not a girl who loves to emotionally cut herself off before I go too insane…

I feel like I’m at an age now where I can see discrete eras of my life — the early 2000s, the mid 2010s, the early 2020s, and now. I look at photos of myself and see a totally different person (thank god). But it’s all kind of, I don’t know, sad? Year after year, I lose more family (death). But I have my chosen family (yay). And I meet new people (yay more friends). I won’t get another birthday card from my Baba, but I have a birthday card from my new friends.

I really think answering a call on the Bratz lip phone would heal me. Or sending a text on my old Verizon flip phone. But I guess I’ll have to settle for rehearsing the Apple TikTok dance until it’s perfect. Alright?? Everyone better have it down before next week. We will take turns performing it for each other.

*I am still OFF TikTok, I saw this video before I deleted the app and I have my sources who are still on the sauce who are my key informants about all Charli content.