YOUNG LOVE AND THE STRENGTH OF OUR EMOTIONS
It's always silly how romance is a constant trope among teenage / coming-of-age media. For example, the book Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen; the recent "Wednesday" series on Netflix where they give Wednesday Addams feelings for a boy. Is it hormones? Is it our animal instinct to mate which society wants instilled within us as soon as we understand the concept of attraction?
I ruminate about this a lot as I continue on with my 20s. In this timeline, my own parents fell in love and had my older sister during their early 20s. As I will soon enter the age they had my sister, I can't help but think about romance. Are these hormones talking?
I've had my own rendition of young love, and I'd like say that it was true love. My hesitation comes from the fact that it was young love. It was a really great experience which I do not take for granted at all. But to be able to claim that it was love is something that I question if I'm able to do. How old do you have to be in order to proclaim that the love you feel is actually love?
This rumination all started because of a We're Not Really Strangers instagram post:
My thoughts were that a young person wrote this to another young person, and it amazed me how a young person had such potent emotions already. "I know we're young, but I want to feel this way with you for as long as I live." The combination of these words, to be written at such a young age, has such a heavy weight to it. The weight of emotion, of some sort of commitment, of desire. It's beautiful, but it's also scary. Scary to want to commit to that idea at the age of adolescence.
Is young love rational, or irrational? Is it real? When does love become true? Perhaps my questioning of romantic love comes from the fact that I am having trouble grappling with how to define it at the moment. But it is amazing to realize just how much emotions we can already feel and express at such young ages.
For your listening pleasure, with some added nostalgia:
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