Ms Geraldine Phillips on „Teen Angst‟

Ms Geraldine Phillips on „Teen Angst‟ (the November 09 discussion topic)

Secondary school. Love it or hate it. But you can never be indifferent to it. Every single emotion that you could possibly experience, you do so in your teens. It never comes quite as blazing and passionate again. Remember when you hated your mother with a fire of a thousand suns? Or when the girl or boy of your dreams finally smiled at you? What about the time when you heard through the grapevine that he /she likes you too! Unreal!

What I remember most from my teen years is that feelings and emotions were completely black and white. There is nothing in between. You are either in the very depths of despair resigned to your fate as a single old hag, or singing with the birds flying hand in hand with your sweetheart across the rainbow in the glorious setting sun. I would not think twice before declaiming my love for a boy I‟ve only known for 24 hours or screaming “I hate you!” and really meaning it to my mother. My inability to see the grey area has of course hindered any intellectual objectivity, but at 15, who cares, right?
Love it or hate it, your teenage years herald some of the most memorable moments of your life. A lot of first‟s, a lot of mistakes, a lot of heartaches and of course a lot of angst. The teenage me moved through life with assurance and conviction that eludes the adult me. The teenage me had so much courage and belief that life would be fantastic and extraordinary.

The adult me knows better. However, the shadow of the teenage optimist stuck around, stubbornly like the recurring pimple that will never go away. I still have bursts of mad optimism from time to time, but definitely not on the scale of fabricating elaborate lifestyles in my head (and actually deluding myself into believing it).
I used to roll my eyes at the adults, who used to tell me to cherish my youth. As if mountains of homework, exam anxiety, raging hormones resulting in unsightly acne, conflicting emotions about that boy/girl and daily rumour-mongering were supposed to represent the best years of my life! With the benefit of hindsight however, I can see now that my teen years have been a focal point in my life. The discovery of new experiences and the exhilaration of sampling something for the very first time is in short a thrilling experience. At the cost of sounding trite, I would say to all teens that the life you have now is somewhat special. You only have a few years to be a teenager, to be forgiven for all the crazy mishaps you get up to and the rest of your life to be a (hopefully responsible) grown up.