My teenage years officially began with the gifting of a stand-up, pink-and-gray stereo system. Along with the system came a Tiffany LP and a Whitesnake tape (Hello, Lonely Street of Dreams!). Hours and days passed, as I locked myself in my room copying sappy love songs from the radio and making mix tapes for my friends – while silently pining over the guy that I liked (and who was not noticing me.)
This sappy pining gave way to angry teenage rebellion: slamming doors, classic rock, a cordless phone, and green light bulb placed under my girlish, mauve lampshade (to create a rebellious aura in my room). It was all harmless – after all, I was still on the honor roll and on the fast-track to college. But my emotions were pulsating at light speed and I was feeling in ways that adults certainly had no capacity to do.
We all know our teen years as that roller coaster time period, that when viewed from our early twenties seem like something survived or merely made up. I remember looking back at my years, from my superior twenty-something stance, with a mix of pity and remorse. Oh honey, if you could have only been a bit more brave, a bit more secure, a bit more of yourself.
From my thirties perch, it all looks a bit different. I miss it. Not all of it, but some of that intense emotion. When did everything sort of flatten out? Not in a bad way, but simply in an everyday-is-the-same-routine kind of way?
That is why, when I get some alone time in the car, you will find me belting out the angsty Taylor Swift and relating to being the girl in the t-shirt, not the high heels. Or singing along to Katy Perry and her Teenage Dream. When I get really serious there are arm pumps and air punches to Bon Jovi, Poison, and Whitesnake. And for those moments, I start to feel the faint pulse of my emotions of way-back-when.
Save those moments. They are as much as part of you as your know-it-all twenty-something years, and probably will give you the energy you need to get through your forties. I am 99% percent thrilled to be out of those years, but that 1% – that is a keeper.
(Photo by Joelle McNichol under Creative Commons License, Flickr.)
Do not lose (all) your teenage angst.
