(no subject)
I just finished reading The Amber Spyglass, the third in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy. It is painfully, heartbreakingly wonderful, and beautifully written, and I simultaneously want to hug and punch the author for being able to write something so sad and so perfect at the same time.
What struck me the most, though, was how convincingly he depicted young love: how you seem to exist for nothing but each other, how you're oblivious to whatever is around you because you're so wrapped up in your feelings, how you wish you could manipulate circumstance to fit those feelings instead of the other way around. In the end (I would say "of course" here, but I like to believe it wasn't inevitable and that somewhere they are living happily ever after) the two protagonists make the "adult" decision and part ways for the good of, well, everyone else in the universe. It's so completely unfair, but it marks the beginning of their maturation: no more childish feelings, so no more decisions. To bend everything else to your will so you can be happy is selfish and immature. We can't be that way forever.
And of course, this gets me thinking about my own twelve-year-old self and my own twelve-year-old love. Though I never had to make the sacrifice that these characters had to make, I could identify with the way they acted towards each other before they had to say goodbye. At twelve, I was lucky enough to have no burdens on my shoulders-- every decision I've had to make, from college to career choice to finances (and I'm still at the infant stages with a lot of those choices) were totally foreign and far-off to me. I didn't have to think-- nor could I have conceived-- of my love in the context of college, or marriage, or sex, or bread-winning, or child-rearing, or settling down, or anything that I take into account on a more regular basis now.
That's not to say that even though my feelings were uncomplicated, there weren't complications to go along with them. When you're twelve and in love, no adult actually believes you. They patronize you and tell you it's "puppy love." So of course I didn't believe I could tell my parents, or anyone but my age-mates and friends, how I felt. Not to mention that when you're twelve and your body is changing and everyone you go to school with is miserable about themselves and therefore miserable about and towards everyone else, you feel in general a sense of isolation and individuality: no one has ever felt the way I'm feeling right now. Of course, when you grow up, you see that's not true, but at the time, there's nothing more true. So along with my love came a loneliness, but the loneliness strengthened the love, in a way-- I'm in love and no one believes me, but that must be because they've never felt the way I do, and I must be more in love than they ever were.
I guess I'm thinking about this now because the book's reminded me of it so vividly, but also because I've just spent the last few days with the boy (man?) I'm currently in love with. Having been in love now several times in the past ten years, I don't pretend that my love is the greatest love that's ever loved, and I can't pretend that our love exists in a bubble away from other parts of our lives. Unlike my twelve-year-old self, I am staring headlong into my future because I have to. A future that, lately, has proven shaky and unreliable-- when I had my job, at least I could pinpoint a place I'd be for a while... I thought that would last, but it hasn't, and now I'm trying to make relationship-related decisions all over again while guessing at the place I might be in a couple months from now. Chris and I were fighting so much in October because we love each other but we love other parts of our lives as well: our careers, our ambitions and dreams, our friends and families. And it's hard, sometimes, to reconcile all those parts and come to a conclusion, because ultimately we can see that relationships take compromise, and compromise sometimes means giving up one thing you want for another.
And while my twelve-year-old self was blissfully unaware of a life without Seth in it, my twenty-two-year-old self is painfully aware of a life that can't have him in it. In a physical way, anyhow. But it's true that my first pass at love has informed many of my relationship decisions to this day. It's screwed me up in some senses, but it has made me braver, bolder, to have a skewed view of second chances: better tell him how you feel now, otherwise you might not ever get the chance. That was a hard lesson to learn, but one worth learning. I wish it could be applied retroactively.
I don't believe that adolescent love is "puppy love." I felt just as strongly then as I do now, only I was unaware of any consequences of my feelings because there were none to be aware of-- I had no responsibilities then. Now it's the same game, with more at stake. But my heart has never broken more than it did that first time.
I don't know why I'm writing all this, except that the Amber Spyglass has opened up my heartbreak all over again and so I need some way of getting it all out. I am heartbroken for the characters just as much as I am for twelve-year-old me and twenty-two-year-old me, which I suppose is just a testament to the author's exceptional writing abilities. And every time I read something so exceptional about love, it always reminds me how I so badly want to tell the story of my first love and what it's taught me. Maybe it's time to seriously start thinking about how to do that.
What struck me the most, though, was how convincingly he depicted young love: how you seem to exist for nothing but each other, how you're oblivious to whatever is around you because you're so wrapped up in your feelings, how you wish you could manipulate circumstance to fit those feelings instead of the other way around. In the end (I would say "of course" here, but I like to believe it wasn't inevitable and that somewhere they are living happily ever after) the two protagonists make the "adult" decision and part ways for the good of, well, everyone else in the universe. It's so completely unfair, but it marks the beginning of their maturation: no more childish feelings, so no more decisions. To bend everything else to your will so you can be happy is selfish and immature. We can't be that way forever.
And of course, this gets me thinking about my own twelve-year-old self and my own twelve-year-old love. Though I never had to make the sacrifice that these characters had to make, I could identify with the way they acted towards each other before they had to say goodbye. At twelve, I was lucky enough to have no burdens on my shoulders-- every decision I've had to make, from college to career choice to finances (and I'm still at the infant stages with a lot of those choices) were totally foreign and far-off to me. I didn't have to think-- nor could I have conceived-- of my love in the context of college, or marriage, or sex, or bread-winning, or child-rearing, or settling down, or anything that I take into account on a more regular basis now.
That's not to say that even though my feelings were uncomplicated, there weren't complications to go along with them. When you're twelve and in love, no adult actually believes you. They patronize you and tell you it's "puppy love." So of course I didn't believe I could tell my parents, or anyone but my age-mates and friends, how I felt. Not to mention that when you're twelve and your body is changing and everyone you go to school with is miserable about themselves and therefore miserable about and towards everyone else, you feel in general a sense of isolation and individuality: no one has ever felt the way I'm feeling right now. Of course, when you grow up, you see that's not true, but at the time, there's nothing more true. So along with my love came a loneliness, but the loneliness strengthened the love, in a way-- I'm in love and no one believes me, but that must be because they've never felt the way I do, and I must be more in love than they ever were.
I guess I'm thinking about this now because the book's reminded me of it so vividly, but also because I've just spent the last few days with the boy (man?) I'm currently in love with. Having been in love now several times in the past ten years, I don't pretend that my love is the greatest love that's ever loved, and I can't pretend that our love exists in a bubble away from other parts of our lives. Unlike my twelve-year-old self, I am staring headlong into my future because I have to. A future that, lately, has proven shaky and unreliable-- when I had my job, at least I could pinpoint a place I'd be for a while... I thought that would last, but it hasn't, and now I'm trying to make relationship-related decisions all over again while guessing at the place I might be in a couple months from now. Chris and I were fighting so much in October because we love each other but we love other parts of our lives as well: our careers, our ambitions and dreams, our friends and families. And it's hard, sometimes, to reconcile all those parts and come to a conclusion, because ultimately we can see that relationships take compromise, and compromise sometimes means giving up one thing you want for another.
And while my twelve-year-old self was blissfully unaware of a life without Seth in it, my twenty-two-year-old self is painfully aware of a life that can't have him in it. In a physical way, anyhow. But it's true that my first pass at love has informed many of my relationship decisions to this day. It's screwed me up in some senses, but it has made me braver, bolder, to have a skewed view of second chances: better tell him how you feel now, otherwise you might not ever get the chance. That was a hard lesson to learn, but one worth learning. I wish it could be applied retroactively.
I don't believe that adolescent love is "puppy love." I felt just as strongly then as I do now, only I was unaware of any consequences of my feelings because there were none to be aware of-- I had no responsibilities then. Now it's the same game, with more at stake. But my heart has never broken more than it did that first time.
I don't know why I'm writing all this, except that the Amber Spyglass has opened up my heartbreak all over again and so I need some way of getting it all out. I am heartbroken for the characters just as much as I am for twelve-year-old me and twenty-two-year-old me, which I suppose is just a testament to the author's exceptional writing abilities. And every time I read something so exceptional about love, it always reminds me how I so badly want to tell the story of my first love and what it's taught me. Maybe it's time to seriously start thinking about how to do that.