Crushing on Agent Cooper, Living with the Fallout

What Happens When Your First Grown-Man Crush Ages—and So Do You

When Time Shows Up Sideways

Time doesn’t always announce itself in a neat, linear way. Sometimes it shows up sideways—through a familiar celebrity face you’ve known for decades, a voice that hasn’t changed much, or a character you thought you’d left behind.

You’re watching television, minding your own business, and suddenly you’re not where—or who—you thought you were.

In this case, it sent me back to the 1990s. Back to being an insecure, neurodivergent teenager—though no one called it that at the time. I certainly didn’t. I just knew I moved through the world feeling slightly off, perpetually out of place, and keenly aware that I didn’t quite fit.

To be clear: I had friends. I could be funny. I could perform extroversion when required. But underneath it all, I was observant—and deeply suspicious of whatever cultural trends everyone else seemed to be following without question.

One of those trends was Beverly Hills, 90210. Everyone was watching it. I watched too, but with a cool, side-eye skepticism—the kind only a surly, angsty goth kid could manage.

What I couldn’t look away from was its warped, bizarro cousin: Twin Peaks.

Yes, it had teen drama—but it was soaked in murder, sex, existential dread, unsettling liminal spaces, and a soundtrack that still haunts me. It was soap-opera excess colliding with high strangeness.

Audrey and Donna in bobby socks. James and his motorcycle channeling The Wild One. Nadine with her eyepatch. The Log Lady. Love triangles nested inside other love triangles. And Sheryl Lee playing both the doomed Laura Palmer and her look-alike cousin, Maddy—because subtlety was never the point.

More than that, the town itself seemed to know something the rest of the world refused to see: that mystery is not something to be solved, but something to be lived alongside.

At the center of it all was Agent Cooper.

A man who treated coffee like a sacrament, spoke to trees without irony, and solved crimes with both logic and intuition—his handsome face radiating kindness and a quiet confidence that suggested he absolutely knew what he was doing behind closed doors.

While other girls were swooning over teenage heartthrobs, I was fixated on a federal agent who took notes on his dreams and believed a good slice of pie could restore moral order.

Audrey was too young for Agent Cooper.

And so was I.

Did not matter. I was crushing hard.

But also—did I want to be with Agent Cooper, or did I want to be Agent Cooper?

What I didn’t have language for then—but understand now—was that I wasn’t drawn to swagger or bravado. I was drawn to attention. To people who noticed things. To those who didn’t treat the unusual as a problem to eliminate, but as something to observe, respect, and learn from.

Agent Cooper wasn’t just a crush.

He was a blueprint.

A permission slip to be strange, sincere, and curious about invisible things.

Fast forward several decades.

Now I’m watching Fallout.

The actor who once embodied earnest curiosity is older. Harder. Playing a character built on control rather than openness. The softness has edges now. His face carries time.

And when the show briefly uses AI to soften his features and turn back the clock, I’m suddenly back in my childhood living room—memory overtaking the present moment.

I feel it immediately. In my bones.

Not heartbreak. Not disappointment.

But the unmistakable, disorienting sensation of time—living in the past, present, and future all at once. Feeling who I was, who I am, and who I’m becoming converge into a single, physical moment.

And thinking: Wait. This is just TV. Why do I feel so unmoored?

Aging alongside the people and stories that shaped us does something powerful. It collapses distance. It reminds us we are not frozen in the version of ourselves who first fell in love with an idea, a character, or a way of being.

Seeing him now is seeing myself—gaining density. My own lines and edges beginning to tell the truth of attention paid, instincts trusted, disappointments metabolized, and courage shaped over time.

I don’t want the past untouched.

I want the truth of what happens when curiosity survives long enough to evolve. When sensitivity develops boundaries. When wonder, with age, grows a spine and takes action.

What Aging Actually Looks Like

Aging isn’t decline.

It’s accumulation.

It looks like:

• Watching your icons change shape

• Recognizing the cost—and value—of depth

• Understanding that wisdom is perseverance with discernment

• Realizing that magick doesn’t disappear—it evolves

I am no longer the angsty teenager watching Twin Peaks in the dark, sensing there was more to life than I’d been told.

I’m the woman who knows there is more—and understands the maintenance required to live with that knowledge.

And sometimes, when the feeling hits again—when the timeline collapses and the future flickers into view—I still think: Wait. This is just TV.

And then I realize:

No.

This is time.