The driving force behind so much bad music, bad poetry, and horrible web sites.  The main thing that drives top 40 music.  The infinite energy of the breaking teenage heart.

To see it from here, from this muffled distance, it's a show, an entertaining thing. That sounds more cruel than it is, really, because this passive observation is done to avoid interference. Think about it: when you were 14 and madly in love, could any adult have talked you out of your feelings?  Could you be told, hey, look, this too shall pass and the world will continue to spin and, hey, everything is Ok...could anyone have told you that?

I won't lose energy on such a hopeless cause.  These sorts of massive heartbreaks at a young age, they're necessary like water is necessary.  They're needed to start the process of learning harsh, basic lessons: people die. The world doesn't do what you want it to do. Your actions and emotions often mean nothing to anyone other than you. You can insist and pray and cry and scream all you want, and all you do is burn yourself.

Over time those injuries build, the scar tissue forms, and we start to rationally exercise our situation.  It may take until half-past grunge and well into old Smiths covers done by cancer patients, but we'll one day find the place where we can stand and start to see the light.

The path.  The way we move through this disaster waiting to happen.

She writes to my nephew, huge posts filled with the hubris and hyperbole that only a teenage girl can create, she writes "if you don't want to be with me forever, then I just can't do this any more" except her spelling is awful.  She's 14.  She's using words like LOVE and FOREVER and OMG. She's the source of every bit of nuclear energy in the heart of every angry young poet lashing out with words of love and derision (often simultaneous) on the myspace of the universe.

Do you remember that feeling? The feeling that the world had cracked open and Santa was dead and God was just a lie in a book and holy mother of fuck, the whole goddamn universe just ran out of air....do you remember that?

I see it from a distance of thousands of miles and twenty two years and it still resonates but in all the wrong ways.  I've become that adult voice, that "don't worry child, everything will be OK." Maybe I know how important it is, though, and maybe in my smug muffled reasoning I find no room to ring like a bell but I completely understand and hope they're not suffering to delusion.

There's nothing more tragically stupid than a teenager taking drastic steps for love.  Hopefully there is that check + balance in place, to stop her once the cutting starts.  Because then this becomes a whole different monologue, and I'm too tired for blood on my hands.  It never comes off all the way.

So here's to the insensitive clod I've become, and here's to the heart of the universe pounding waves of loss on some poor girl too caught up in her own drama to fully understand that yes, child, for the love of all that is: it will get better.

I promise.