The Kids are Alright

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.