my teenage feelings

i'd like to share with the world a song that is awesome. it's called that teenage feeling by neko case:

if you haven't given it a listen, or read the lyrics, the song is about someone who can't help but be jaded after a series of short-lived relationships. she admires her friend who can be content chasing teenage feelings while knowing that the love will never last. that leaves the woman confused, doubting whether she can ever make a relationship work, especially now that there's been so many past lovers and past lives she's lived.

i remember liking girls in high school but never having the balls to do anything about it. so, in a completely unhealthy way, i was able to sit safely in the confines of my teenage hopes and feelings, letting them incubate into something perfect. when girls did come, they were short lived. there was the girl who liked me, who danced with me close at homecoming. and then the nice girl i liked who lived far away. they weren't relationships by any means, but they gave me moments that hinted at that teenage feeling. so now, i feel like i have this intuitive understanding of love, but it's mostly just the outcome of years of emotional masturbation and guesswork. and even though i've gone through enough now to know not to believe my feelings, i still do sometimes. so go figure.

but what's the point of this. i guess when i heard this song, i remembered driving by those telephone poles on the way home from school. i remembered the changing seasons, from the harsh winter colds to the dying green weeds. me and my expectations, suffocating under the pressure of my teenage feelings. now, as i'm going through another series of realizations about how imperfect relationships are, i think about how useless those vague warnings that people passed off as advice have become. they would offer their past experiences with phrases like "take it slow" or "no touching". it's frustrating to think that the person who's helped me understand what i'm going through is a woman who doesn't know me at all. and while i'm thankful that she did it in just two minutes and forty two seconds, i'm still annoyed that she did it after the fact.

but how could i blame anyone? maybe it's just hard to really describe what goes on when someone comes of age. after all, that's how the song ends. all she can say is that it's hard. maybe in all the teenage delusions of love, the only thing that it might just be is hard.


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but really, the awesomeness of this song came to me when i heard the song 1234 by the talented leslie feist. yeah, it's a cool song and it has a cute video. but her writing pales in comparison to neko case. 1234 is about a brokenhearted girl whose teenage hopes of true love failed her, leaving her somewhat bitter. it's a cute song but the only purpose it serves is to be compared to "that teenage feeling", and also to give an excuse to beat someone up, particularly anyone who tries to do the stupid dance whenever it's played.