What we were doing in 2009

A little crowd-sourced tramp down memory lane, with thoughts on nostalgia for “simpler” times.

I have some feelings about the social media romanticization of 2016.

First of all, I don’t look different enough from my 2016 self for any dramatic before-and-after pictures. Sure, my body is a little squishier, but I’ve worn enough sunscreen that my face isn’t remarkably older-looking.

Secondly, it’s not like 2016 was that great. I get that the extremely online among us might get a little misty-eyed for a time when Instagram timelines were chronological, the algorithm wasn’t actively pandering to everyone’s worst impulses, and we hadn’t realized that yes, he really could win. AI wasn’t smart enough to act autonomously, but slop was still everywhere on social media, and people were falling for it. In fact, most historians and other reputable sources can agree that the roots of our current *waves hands* in America go back decades, before the internet was in our pockets. I personally think a lot of it started getting really bad in earnest during the 2008-2009 Great Recession.

But fine. You want to get nostalgic about a “simpler time” for all of us? Hold my Hypnotiq.

2009: A year of reckoning, and not just for elder millennials

I decided to survey my friends and social media followers on TikTok and Instagram to see what they remember from that year, at first because that is when my debut novel Be Well is set, and I need to market it (pre-order links are coming soon, I promise!). I wanted to write an essay about what we remember. My question was simple: “What were you doing in 2009?”

I thought it might be a lot of people my age talking about turning 21 and being faced with an economy that did not have any use for their liberal arts degrees.

There were a fair amount of 21st birthday memories.

“I was throwing up in the woods after my 21st birthday.”

“2009 was the year I could legally drink (I waited until I was 21), and so I remember feeling very sophisticated going on a date with my now-husband to an Applebees to drink fruit martinis, and then visiting a hookah bar.”

My mom bought me my first legal drink in the U.S. on my 21st birthday, which was a pomegranate martini at BJ’s (thanks, mom!). My 21st birthday party was a 90s-themed affair at the house I was living in that summer, which was nicknamed “Real World House” because it was large and drama-filled. We had a keg. I dressed as Doug Funnie’s alter-ego Quailman and played beer pong. Two of my friends showed up dressed in jeans and hoodies, excused themselves to the bathroom, and then emerged with their clothes on backwards, grinning. “We’re Kriss Kross!”

Going out in general was much more of a ritual, no matter where in the world you were.

“In 2009 I was being a little rat running around dive bars and having random porch parties.”

“Quarter beers every Wednesday at a shitty college bar in Idaho. You had to pay in quarters. You didn’t know if you were getting PBR, Bud Light, or Coors Light. And you could buy up to 8 at a time!”

“It was the beginning of senior year. I was spending time going to field parties. People having their truck lights on, a giant bonfire, people blasting music on their loud but cheap speakers. Going to garage parties. Smoking weed out of pipes we all named when we bought them.”

“Getting ready with roomies in our East Village apartment, prob blasting Beyoncé - and then heading to Arlo & Esme or Lit Lounge.”

The pandemic may have changed “going out” culture forever, and I have mixed emotions about that. Social connection is my fuel, but I wore heels to some unconscionable places. I don’t wear heels now, period, unless they are Naturalizer brand. I have bunions.

Oh God, the 2000s shibboleths.

“I was still using a flat iron on my hair pretty often and bought vodka & green apple martini mix for my first apartment.”

“Leggings + ‘going out’ top.”

“Was still jealous I didn’t have a Blackberry.”

“The scarves were infinity, as were our tolerances.”

“Wearing head to toe American Apparel and dancing to Justice.”

“Wearing band tees & skinny jeans, with the longest wing liner…Smoking camel crushes…It was the time when we didn’t post everything on social media. Just what we wanted to. It was incredible & awkward.”

“...the little feather headbands across the foreheads…Myspace coding with top 8s, Tumblr, the Internet was truly still the wild wild west. Taking our digital camera to document everything. What a time to be alive.”

“ABC parties (anything but clothes) were soooo popular.”

OK, I feel personally attacked by that one. I did, in fact, attend more than one of those. I wore a bed sheet and caution tape to one, and saw someone in the bathroom repairing her dress made entirely out of playing cards and scotch tape. What a legend.

Oh, the side bangs. Clearly I was intent on never showing the world more than one of my eyes at once.

The music was pretty great (but we still gloss over the really stupid stuff)

“I was on and off with my girlfriend at the time, and listening to a lot of Bon Iver in the “off” periods.”

“The top 100 in music was all over the place genre-wise.”

Ain’t that the truth. 2009 gave us Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “It’s Blitz!” and Passion Pit’s “Manners,” which was my going-out-getting-ready soundtrack, but it also gave us “Party Rock” by LMFAO, featuring “Shots.” That is a song I will still scream along to no matter where I am if it comes on, but I don’t think anyone who was a young adult that year can claim better music taste than anyone else.

Prefrontal cortexes were not fully formed.

“Having a crush on a guy that had just dropped out [high school] so he could grow medical plant full time.”

“Stupidly marrying a man just before I turned 19. I’m gay.”

“Getting thrown in mall jail.”

For what it’s worth, I was on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off, etc. with the same boyfriend all throughout 2009, because my sense of self-worth and willingness to let things go was also not fully formed. I would like to thank my friends and roommates from that period for their eternal patience.

A lot of people were unemployed and struggling financially, and that’s a reality.

“Lol perfecting my smoothie game because I was unemployed.”

“Freshman year of college, lots of our parents were unemployed/underemployed so no financial help. We were scraping together our part time job money and drinking Miller Lite, Mad Dog 2020, and UV Blue. Our main activities were drinking cheap booze, long walks, and $2 Tuesday movie nights.”

“I spent half the year in grad school with my husband unemployed and freaking out. He got a job, I graduated, and then started applying to every job I could (it took until 2010 to find something). 2009 was a lot.”

“...oh and we also had moved out of my childhood home the year prior because we [were] foreclosed [on].”

“Worked as a summer camp counselor because I couldn’t afford not to work even though I had a really cool internship offer in DC.”

“Tried to live off $25 a week to eat without knowing how to cook. Part of the year I definitely lived off movie theater popcorn from work.”

Things were heavy.

“2009 I had a baby, also instant single mom so I was living with my mom.”

“I didn’t do much bc I was pregnant most of the year and then had a newborn…and then there was a literal blizzard on Christmas.”

“My mom had just passed away from cancer two years prior (2007) and I had no parents or money, cause medical bills at any generational wealth. Then the housing market crashed (2008), so every job said “you’re young I’m going to hire this person instead of you because they have kids and a mortgage” (2009). Then I was couch surfing/homeless cause I had no credit score, no parental cosigner, while working and going to college. Hitchhiking to college, work, then to where I slept…basically everywhere. But you know what is great, I got my associates degree, bachelors of science, then my masters and now I’m a professional academic :).”

“2009 my mom passed unexpectedly and I became my sister’s guardian. Then my grandmother passed. TBH it was not a good year lol.”

Whether it was financially or not, 2009 was a year where a lot of peoples’ lives were turned upside-down, TBH. I noticed that a lot of the pictures I posted on Facebook that year were from my semester abroad, because that was the fun, attractive me I wanted to show to everyone. But they did not show the intense guilt I felt for doing so while the effects of the recession were hitting my family hard in multiple ways.

Someone I know who used to work as a local news producer told me once that the number of murder-suicides they covered that year was exponentially higher, because that is how desperate some people felt after they lost jobs, businesses, and homes.

The jobs people did have were apparently extremely memorable.

“I was serving at EPCOT. It was my favorite job because I was allowed to be unquestionably happy and allow time for others to be happy. Genuinely love being happy and people being happy.”

Summer 2009 was when I was hired by my uncle to clear out my late grandparents’ house, organize everything for donation, and divide pictures, furniture, possessions, and other things that were obviously supposed to go to various family members. It was physical work, done alone for the most part. I wanted it that way, because it was simpler to clean alone and I didn’t have a ton of privacy at that point in my young adulthood (see: roommates in “Real World House”). It felt almost intrusive to be going through my grandparents’ closets, their storage room, under the beds the way I was, especially in the room where they had both died. But I genuinely felt like it was my way of saying a long goodbye to my childhood.

I’m not a huge fan of nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Day-to-day, I operate like someone who just wants to move forward and face what’s right in front of me with what I have (yes, my therapist has a lot to say about this). But I also like looking back. I just need a healthy amount of distance to really learn anything from it.

Be Well was set in when it was because I felt so much emotional connection to that time of my life. For a lot of us, 2009 wasn’t simpler, for better or worse. In fact, some of it was downright absurd. And that’s the world I write about, for better or worse. Nothing is simple at the time, nothing is simple ever.

Thank you, but the way, if you shared your story with me. I really appreciate it. But if you haven’t told me already, and you want to, what were you doing then? If you were the girl in the playing cards dress, please let me know and tell me your secret.