You listened to it over and over, certain that your heart was shattered and you would never love again. Has it stood the test of time?
Most of us have been through it. The first time you fall in love as an adolescent, your bloodstream consisting of overclocked hormones with occasional traces of blood. You’re certain that nobody has ever felt this way before, you can’t imagine ever loving anyone else, it is the most overwhelmingly powerful thing you’ve ever experienced.
Then, inevitably, you get your heart broken. It’s the worst thing ever, you’re a shattered shell of yourself, you don’t believe there will ever be hope or joy again. And if you’re like most teenagers in this stage, there was some song that encapsulated your pain and loss and heartache so perfectly that you listened to it over and over for days, for weeks, maybe for months.
I feel bad for the families of kids who don’t use headphones during this stage.
For me, at seventeen, it was “King of Pain” by the Police. In that respect, I’m lucky. It’s held up well, stood the test of time, and I can hear it on the radio and look back on what it once meant to me with nothing more than rueful nostalgia. For others, the ones whose fickle hearts chose to imprint on Color Me Badd or Shaun Cassidy as the soundtrack for their pain, it’s rueful nostalgia mixed with squirming embarrassment.
What was yours? Is it still in your personal playlist, or not? Have you recycled it for subsequent, lesser heartbreaks? Are you having a sudden urge to listen to it now?
Photo—miguelpdl/Flickr