Dion, of and the Belmots fame, wondered why he had to be a teenager in love. He might
as well have asked why he had to be teenager with spots. The two things - teenagism and love, not love and spots – go
hand in hand like young
lovers skipping delightfully through
a sun-kissed summer meadow, awash with daisies, birdsong and promise.
I’ve been reminded of this classic slice of teen-angst
tunage this week, as I’ve been surrounded by a herd of teenagers for four days,
and the hormonal-emotional complex has been spinning and clashing around the
air, dancing the dance of youthful confusion.
It’s been most amusing to watch, like a retired footballer who can enjoy
the game from the sidelines. Teenage love in full throttle is a battle to
behold.
There is the obvious rebuff that it’s not actually love, its
puppy-love, or a chemical inkick of hormones driving the festering impulse to
pair up and procreate. But I’m with Donny Osmond on this
one*. There are as many different kinds
of love as there are people who exist, as there are moments in time, as there
are reasons why Coldplay suck.
During my cautious teenage years, my friends and I would
have degrees of romantic attachment from ‘I like you’ to ‘I’m in like with you’
and then a quantum leap to ‘I love you’ reaching perfection with ‘I’m in love
with you’ and culminating in ‘If you leave me I will end the universe and everyone
in it.’ It was generally understood that
this last stage was a stage too far. We’d
been sold the idea of the True Love, and the quest for perfection made us
cynical and reserved. Well, that and experience.
I’d like to offer a retrospective Fuck That to the lie we
were sold. The idea of True Love belongs in Shrek with talking donkeys and
midget princes. The only difference
between the teenage love and adult love is that the emotions tend to be less ephemeral,
less unstable. And, I suppose more importantly, reciprocal. Sometimes, anyway. Not for stalkers, obvs.
But a feeling is a feeling is a feeling. The teenage love I
felt for Melody, a girl I met swimming, was no less serious to me at thirteen,
than the emotions I’ve felt as an adult. Even if it lasted a couple of days
before I forgot about her, and later discovered she was called Melanie, and I’d
just misheard her in the five minutes of conversation against a background of
squealing and splashing. The point is the
feeling was felt. It existed. It can say ‘I was’.
Similarly, the heartbreak in my later teens of being dumped
in a letter ripped my universe into shreds as much as anything in my later
years. The difference is that it was patched together, with only slight damage**, after a
couple of weeks rather than the month/year lifespan of a dead adult
relationship.
Obviously, the love we feel as adults tends to be more
discriminating, and as we age, and grow, we hone our emotional focus, and the
love we feel is more special because it is much more exclusive. The primary focus of attraction is no longer
proximity, but compatibility and connection. Which is probably why it generally lasts more
than a few hours. A tortoise of emotion rather than a mayfly.
And we may look back and grade our loves on a lovescale, and
we may look back at our teens with a wry detachment. But those years forged our
resilience, our fears, our dreams. The
elation and drives felt, the utter wretched destruction rained upon us, are no
less serious for their transience. As
anyone who has taken acid will confirm, the brevity of a time period is not
relative to its intensity. And, like a
drug, love fucks up the mind.
So, teenagers of the world, if you feel it, follow it. I see your struggles, your confusion, your
anger, your pain, your dreams and recognise its reality. I’ll offer only one piece of advice. When it
gets too much, listen to
this, and remember, one day you’ll be twenty, and someone else will be in
your place.
* And nothing else. Big-toothed, smiling moron.
**Debatable.
**Debatable.
