Adolescent Angst

When swept up in mood, caught in a change of status, relationship, material well-being it is easy for what you write to suggest that you are obsessed with a single theme.

Finding myself alone after several years is heavy and unwelcome change in my life. But that is often absent from my thoughts.

It isn’t at all like the roiling pressure of my adolescence, early manhood – a distinction that may be no more than a matter of years. Actually in my case the chronological boundary was marked by the access of sexual knowledge. Ceasing to be an erotic ignoramus and becoming someone blessed with opportunities to enact his enjoyment of the bodies of others.

But also cursed by the Love Business. That awful love of love. The foolish pining and craving for some beloved to adore and cherish. An outsized hunger that muddles the mind, poisons the heart and corrupts the process of living.

One day the romantic nuttiness went into remission. And later I did find love. Loves that didn’t endure but for a time made realities of hypothesized emotions.

Yes, I’d like to have someone to hold precious. In whose eyes I can see a special kind of happiness in being with me.

But I’m not shaking imaginary bars or lying abed at night bitter in my want. I’m not a teenager in body or mind. That is good.

Being older does special oppression. You known your chances are less: age renders us less wanted. And the future has fewer years. Time really is running out.

Some nights hurt. But the pain is modulated with a sureness that somehow I’ll cope. I’ve managed to do despite all sorts of adversities.

This plodding species of coping isn’t particularly cheery. But it is superior to the seemingly infinite abyss of youthful longing.