Teenagerism

I've had "Apologize" in my head the past day, and then I started listening to it. And it makes me feel sort of sad, and it makes me feel all that tension. When I read through the lyrics, I understood why too. It's all about that difficulty with love - how he loves her, but he can't take her treating him badly. Not that that specifically relates to anything I've been through, but just reminded me of sitting at home listening to different music, and just feeling melancholy, and at times very sad. 

But looking back, I loved the tension and issues of being a teenager. I loved walking out onto an open dance floor and pretending there was no one else in the room but me, and just having a blast. I was a little taken aback awhile ago to have someone refer to me encouraging other people to dance with my dancing. The only way I could do it was by ignoring the fact that all those other people even existed. I miss dances so much. 

I also love the melancholy. Really, I like wallow in it, because I don't want to let it go. I don't know what my attachment to it is. It's not like it really feels all that good. It hurts. And it's not like I am thinking now that it will bring me some great happiness, because I don't even really want to be happy right now, because I want to be melancholy. I associate the feeling with being a teenager, because it is perhaps the strongest feeling I had in my high school years, whereafter it dropped off a lot, but which I also didn't experience a lot before then. 

I feel like I was born to be a teenager. I loved it. All the hormones, all the weird feelings, all the sadness over the littlest things. All the worrying so much about the tiniest contact with the guys that were my love interets. All the fantastical love, not really based on much grounded in the real world. Dancing my heart out. Walking down the hallway singing to myself, trying to overcome my caring what random strangers thought of me. 

Maybe one of the things I liked best was that it was really easy to see change in myself. The changes were so quick and drastic. Not caring about what other people thought about me (in general, not specifically), reading my scriptures, fasting, attending seminary, growing a garden. There were just all these things that were for my personal growth.

I think I just discovered why I like the melancholy. It's because it often leads to this feeling I have right now. Which isn't some cheerful feeling. It's more a heart-wrenching joy. It's pain and happiness all rolled up in one. It is such a richness of experience. And that is why I love it. Because the pain is what makes it real to me. 

But the troubles of my life nowadays do not usually produce this kind of feeling often, which is why I look back on teenage years with nostalgia, because I felt like this a lot. Why do I love it? Because to me, this is what eternal happiness will be like, I guess. There will have to be a lot of pain. I don't imagine that Heavenly Father doesn't experience pain for his children, but it makes his joy deeper. It's like my singing teacher would say with the voice. You make the voice darker, and it somehow comes lighter at the same time. 

Anyway, I guess I am not really saying anything much. Just that I enjoy the vast array of emotions that I get to experience in this life, the varying mixtures of sadness and joy. I try to avoid anger - that doesn't really add much to anything for me. But the sadness - it always provides me a new chance at rebirth.