stream of teen spirit

love, lust, attraction & the problems therein

One of the problems with being seventeen is that I don’t know what love is.  Oh, sure, I love my parents (sometimes, when they’re not insisting on pissing me off all the time), and I love my friends (when I’m not throwing bread at them in the school cafeteria because they’ve said that they want to have a baby NOW), but I’m not talking that kind of love.  I’m talking romantic love, which is relatively disgusting in of itself.

Anyway, since we’re basically giant balls of emotion oozing hormones all over the dining room floor, we don’t know what real love is.  I mean, I know what lust is, don’t let anyone tell you I don’t.  Because I do.  Because, guys, a lot of girls want sex just as much as you.  We just tend to keep it a little quieter.  And not be obvious.  And when we’re aroused, you can’t tell as much.  This is a handy trait.

And yeah, we know what attraction is, because if you don’t you’re an idiot.  I mean, some people don’t, and that’s both cute and pathetic, but usually we can tell when we’re attracted to someone.

But how do we know what love is?

I know for a fact that I can’t actually tell anyone that I’m in love with them, because I don’t know.  I mean, I can say, “I’m in like with you,” but it doesn’t have the same ring, or connotation, and “I’m in lust with you,” is just such a creepy statement that anyone who utters it should be shot. 

Really though, does anyone know what love is?

If I can’t tell, and I’m going to legally be an adult in four months, how can you tell?  Is there just some day when suddenly you wake up and go, “Oh, I get it,”?  Is that something I’ll figure out on my eighteenth birthday?  What about all those kids who get engaged when they’re teenagers?  Well, for one thing, they’re dumb, but do they know what love is?  What about those kids who just marry their high school sweetheart without looking around first?  If you don’t have any experience, how do you know what love is?

I actually have a boyfriend (for this, I deserve a giant round of applause, please and thank you) and I know that I still don’t know how I feel about him.  Oh, I’m definitely attracted to him, I like him, and I think that lust is probably an obvious point (did I mention that I’m seventeen?), but I don’t know if I love him.  Granted, this is sort of a new development in my life, so I don’t need to know, but I don’t know if I’ll know when I need to know if I do.  I don’t think that made much sense, but hopefully the message came across.

Love, huh?  What the hell is that?

~zoe estrin-grele, 17 (brattleboro, vermont)

how do you know what love is

How do you know what love is? How can something so strong between 2 individuals ~ mind, body and soul ~ connect? How does electricty and force push them together? Feeling that sense of being whole. How can it feel so right? to be with that person? For what feels/seems so short yet so long, fly by our eyes with no time at all. 

Some forget what it is. some lose or misplace that feeling, that sense of love, passion that holds them together. The spark is still there, it's almost forgotten, it just needs to be relit. 

Let the fire burn, let it grow, let  it reach so high towords the sky!  Don't let us forget! SQUEEZE US & don't stop showing the feeling of sunshine. Don't let the sunshine turn into rain. One may forget from time to time. Just remind us of how much we mean to you, how special we are. Acknowledge the little things, the big things ~ the nice, thoughtful, helpful things they do for you. Don't let it slip between your fingers, get a good grip and don't let go. Believe me it slips if your don't try. 

And if you don't know what it's like to love yet, just keep your heart open but be strong enough to control it. Don't just give it to anyone! There will be that feeling with someone somewhere . . .           

   BY chee/ chelsea denyou, 17, (bellows falls, vermont)

thoughts on music

I was given my name at a restaurant named Here Come The Sun, ironically.  I had very mainstream and corporate music tastes up until that seemingly fateful April afternoon. I had heard of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, but I never really heard them until one afternoon, MTV had a 90's music video special and Smells Like Teen Spirit came on. That song blew my brains out. (No Kurt Cobain pun intended by the way.) All of a sudden, there was really a way to express those feelings of deep alienation, the true nothingness of nothing, at that edge of despair into the wilderness of teenage depression and angst. That song sparked a whole new revolution of music in my life. I got more and more into Nirvana, but I also developed a love of the whole “grunge” scene, suddenly my iTunes library was starting to fill with bands like the Sex Pistols, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and 60's music really came into full force. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and even The Clash and Creedence Clearwater Revival started to sound good.  Music completely changed my outlook on life, the pain I felt due to my various relationship problems in my life, music helped me express the seemingly endless source emptiness throughout. When family issues came up with my mother's lack thereof state of mental stability, the first thing I thought was, “How do live this down, how can I come back from this?” I took a page out of my idols, and took the crappy acoustic guitar in my room and used the 3 chord rock style that I had almost worshipped. And through that, I wrote my first song.

~brendan mcpherson, 14, (westminster west, vermont)