It's been a while since a movie touched me like "La La Land" did.

Sure, every scene of "Fences" moved me when I watched it on Christmas with my parents. The velvet-cake words floated off Viola Davis's and Denzel Washington's lips. Finally, audiences are getting a glimpse into everyday black life, in all aspects, on the big screen.

I teared up during "A Dog's Purpose" — even though I'm a cat person through and through.

"Hidden Figures" made me want to shake the authors of history textbooks across the country and just ask why? How? Taraji P. Henson deserves an Oscar just for her run back and forth to the bathroom. At a time when girls might doubt their worth and place in society, that movie is needed more than ever.

But nothing has stuck with me like "La La Land," a movie about two struggling artists trying to make it in Los Angeles. The goosebumps started when Emma Stone hears Ryan Gosling play melancholy notes on the piano. My arms prickled as she froze and stared at him from across the room.

The goosebumps continued as I watched the two fall in love and struggle to make it in a city where everyone else struggles to make it.

But it wasn't the love story that gave me goosebumps. It wasn't the gorgeous soundtrack. It wasn't the throws to old-school Hollywood glamour.

No, it was just so freaking relatable.

"But what if I'm not good enough?" Emma Stone's character asks during the climax of the film. She's tired. She's been in Hollywood for six years, trying to make it as an actress.

While she goes on countless auditions, she works as a barista. She feels like a failure.

I could feel her question all the way from my seat. It shot straight through me and into my toes.

Because I've been there.

Last year, when I graduated from Syracuse, I wrote dozens of cover letters to potential employers across Texas.

As I waited six months to land a job, I wracked my brain. I worked for Favor delivery and tutored students on the side. During this period, I asked, was it all for nothing? What if I don't make it? What if I'm not good enough?

Even now that I have a job, the question still comes sometimes now, late at night when all those thoughts usually do — am I good enough?

Will I achieve all of my dreams? Is life going to live up to my expectations?

"Stop being a baby," Ryan Gosling's character says to Emma Stone's.

I laughed. Hard.

Because I have been the baby Gosling's character talks about. The one who whines and says it's too hard. The one who doesn't know how I'm going to handle the challenges life keeps throwing.

The one who just wants to run home to her parents' house — which is easy, since I still live with them.

He said, "Stop being a baby," and I felt myself sit up straighter. As he told Emma Stone's character to go on another audition, I felt my body revive and hum.

Maybe we all need pep talks from Ryan Gosling.

This movie featuring two beautiful actors, in a beautiful city, was actually not about beauty at all. It was about the pain that comes with failing. It was about realizing that sometimes you're going to doubt yourself.

It was about falling deeply in love with someone and knowing you still might not end up with them after all. It was about the moment at the end of the movie when they meet again, so many years later, and their lives have changed — but they can see they both made it.

It was about the smile they exchanged, the bittersweet feeling of knowing it didn't work out between them, but a shared happiness for the other succeeding.

I think what made this movie the most beautiful to me is that I've been there. I've waited for the job. I've fallen in love. I've lost the guy. I've been the most millennial of millennials.

And as a twentysomething still trying to make it in this life, I have to give kudos to "La La Land" for so brilliantly depicting what it means to struggle, fail and fall in love.

I'm starting to understand how pain can also show you life's beauty.

Stop being a baby. Bookmark Gray Matters.

