When I see teenagers out and about, I cross the street. I won’t watch teen movies, I won’t watch teen shows. The under-baked yearnings of teen pop stars leave me cold. Merely glimpsing a teen causes me to turn away and shut down completely. Pictures of teenagers in the 80s? Get them out of my sight. The revulsion is so strong, so sudden and overwhelming, that it’s one of the few things in the world, and definitely my life, that I find it difficult to investigate, let alone discuss out loud.
I carefully frosted around this for the memoir, but there’s not much about my teen years in there. I mention a rift between me and my parents. I mention upset and anger, but even I am aware that this is where my voice detaches. While other parts of my life — the toddler, the war baby, the new mom, are fully embodied, and I can slip into and out of experiencing those moments when reading about them, I recall teen me from a safe distance, and my discomfort with examining that time makes me so itchy I have to look away.
The bare-bones story I tell is that we moved to the US on my 14th birthday and I was effectively under lockdown over the next three years because of my extremely loving, but extremely protective parents. Unlike the rest of my life, 1994-1997—the ages of 14-17— is a black hole of sense memories, except one: I remember how the bathroom tile felt under my back when I laid on the ground and cried. I cried, in those years, like I’ve never cried in my life. I cried until all my muscles hurt, until my throat was raw, until I couldn’t muster another tear for a few weeks. I’m certain I experienced some joyful teen moments: a handful of school dances, and a first boyfriend. I had a few kind friends, even. But I can’t summon any of those happy memories. I’ve never even been back to the town we lived in then—a perfectly lovely place, but difficult to separate from my sadness.
I’m six years into a Transcendental Meditation practice, ten years into therapy, sixteen years into this relationship (plus, kids!). I’ve had to become an infinitely more serene, happier version of myself than I was when I screeched out of my parents’ house at 17. But if I’m with them, and we get on the topic of high school, I’m possessed. That old sadness flips into rage and I’m snapping at them for 30-year-old slights, almost before I know what’s going on. Mum might make a joke about locking me in the house, and that’s it, I’m trembling with anger, and making them aware of it. I don’t want to be this way.
I was talking to an online friend who had a hard time in high school and mentioned that her therapist asked her to tend to her “inner teen.” I was startled. I can’t imagine wanting to hang out with mine, I said. She’s so miserable, and so furious. I’d be terrified of her. She laughed and said I’d have to get in there and get to know her again — what made her happy, what were her hopes and dreams? What did she yearn for? And I feel so unprepared to ask her these questions.
I asked a few friends yesterday, friends my age, who love teen-type things, why they love them, and they said because they felt so deeply as teenagers, and don’t get to now. “John Hughes said ‘when you grow up your heart dies,’” said my friend Sarah. I worry sometimes that my heart died at 14, that I had to snuff it out to survive the emotional isolation, and I’ve spent the years since resuscitating it, piece by piece.
Out here in my real life, outside of my head, outside of my past, I am raising a pre-teen. He’s been my loving little boy, always burrowed into my side, holding my hand, seeking my approval, confiding in me. An open book, an open wound—my heart outside my body, as they say. When will you stop letting me kiss you in public, I asked him last month. Not yet, he said. But lately I’m jarred by his eye-rolls, the flashes of anger in his eyes. The hurt, the betrayal, the tears welling up when he’s trying to make me understand something I am simply not getting. I freeze in these moments, fearful I’m staring down a version of the self I have tried so hard to avoid. Fearful I’m going to lose him to the rift, if I can’t figure out how to navigate it.
And every instinct tells me that this next leg of our journey starts by reacquainting myself with the surly teen I’ve been avoiding. In my mind, she’s currently inside a storage closet under the stairs, but the door is papered over. The wallpaper is a blue and white floral pattern on butter yellow, its colors calming, cheerful. The opposite of the sturm und drang that awaits me within. I know exactly where the seams of the door are, and run my fingers over the edges sometimes. But I’m nervous about breaking the seal. She’s comfortable in there, with a book and her simmering rage. She likes to be left alone, I know this, so I have left her alone. But because she’s me, I also know that she’s secretly hoping someone will care enough to check.
xox
About the image, and some extras
Recs: This clarifying shampoo, this super-easy recipe, this gift I bought said boy, this read, this podcast ep (100% shooting fish in a barrel but made me feel GREAT).
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I’m so ready for this!