Happy New Year, A Reflection on Romantic Teenage Relationships

My first love broke up with me near the end of high school. I went to meet him at his house some time afterwards to return his music albums. He flipped through them in a binder in his long driveway and took them out one by one. But when he came to Tranatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie he stopped moving so quickly as he was and said “you can keep this one”. So I did.

For years I played it over and over again, crying to the music and the memory of my first love in my tiny car. I knew and still know every word and every cadence. At some point, I decided to get rid of the CD and all my photo albums from high school. I was tired of reflecting on the past and the person I used to be. We are so many people until we find ourselves. I burned them in a low fire pit in my parents’ backyard with the help of a friend.

I don’t think I’ve heard the music from that Death Cab album again until today. It’s New Years Eve. The song New Year’s Eve states, “it’s New Year’s Eve and I don’t feel any different.” First loves stay with us. They are an experience of great love and great loss. This particular relationship was the first time I greatly questioned myself or who I was as a person in reflection to those around me. What did I do so wrong to be left?

You don’t realize, as a teenager, how much your romantic relationships teach you and shape you, and also how much they stay with you. They are a measurement system for every relationship that comes after. The words in the Death Cab album are mature, yet they made perfect sense to me as a teenager.

There is also an unspoken knowledge that teenage relationships don’t last. You hold on to the moments knowing either he’ll dump you or you’ll go off to college and eventually meet someone else. Moreover, it’s how you begin to understand the word “love”. And in these years, this word means “I’ll leave you”, “I’ll not call you back”, and “I’ll get drunk and laugh at you in front of all our friends and not be sorry.” It’s New Year’s Eve, around fifteen years later, and I don’t feel any different sometimes, but I now know what love actually is and what it looks like. And I'm sure he does too.

Teenage relationships are a much more mature feeling than we know how to navigate at the time. And looking back at them, we can be in that small place, without power to say how we really feel, without knowing how to handle hurt, or the intensity of our underage or premature passions.

Romantic teenage relationships often get laughed at or not taken seriously, but they are real and they are more intense than a young person can handle at times. At least they were for me.

At the age of 32, I had a high school boy tell me his girlfriend of many years had just broken up with him. He asked me what I would do differently if I could go back to high school. I told him I would never date. I would focus on my studies, I’d run track (something I didn’t do), and I’d never so much as look at the male sex. He was a bit shocked and asked me why. I told him it’s because you never forget the passion and the pain of a teenage relationship, the helplessness. And instead of focusing on yourself and your growth, you’re focused on the other person, how to please them, how to keep them, what to do or try to say next. I’m not sure if I meant my reply to him or not. And I hope I didn’t stunt him. Although all of that is true, the pain and everything else, the beauty of it all was something so magical and something I never felt and will never feel again. I love now, but it’s not mixed with young life’s newness, such complexity, passion, romance, and adorable fumbling (well, sometimes the fumbling). I would have done a lot of things differently if I had known the outcome, but I’m not sure I’d completely erase it all.

When my high school boyfriend left me that one CD, I thought, “I might not have him, but I have great music”. Great music was something he often introduced me to. He introduced me to my most favorited band, Bright Eyes. In this way, he unknowingly taught me how to cope by using music as a tool. I still do that today. I still love Bright Eyes. I still play music and cry in my car, sometimes I scream just for fun. Life is full of lessons from all angles. You can’t go back to fix anything. You have to move forward and to know how to do it. Redemption is always an option. We teach each other how.

Happy New Year. Keep moving forward. Keep loving better and better, and better and better.