Everything I Knew About Love At Sixteen
a nod to Dolly Alderton's 'Everything I Know About Love'
There is little else more important than finding a boyfriend. It’s not unreasonable to think you’ll meet Mr Big at fifteen or sixteen, certainly by seventeen. If you’ve gotten further than that without finding him, then you may be alone forever, relegated to the role of “Cool Aunt.” At least you can put that cotton candy pink hair, and cartilage piercing to use. At least someone will think you’re cool for having seen Detroit Rock City no less than a dozen times.
Speaking of Mr Big, this is the ideal. You know that you’re a Charlotte at heart, captivated by the career of a Carrie, but wanting to be a writer doesn’t make you Carrie and the fact you ended up as a publicist doesn’t make you Samantha. You are way too much of a prude to be Samantha and you will never run up the stairs in a pearl thong. I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen. Let’s just not mention Miranda because you don’t know this yet, but she really went off the rails in the reboot and it’s better to preserve her memory. (RIP)
You’ll know a boy really likes you when he fights for you. This can be physical or emotional, it doesn’t really matter. So long as he’s in some kind of anguish over you, that’s love. When a boy throws a punch, crosses the country, stands on his desk to declare his love to you a la Seth Cohen, you will know he’s The One.
Life is for the taking if only you can stop being so anxious and actually live your life. At fifteen this means blasting Green Day’s American Idiot and running away to the playground down the street. It means having a sad sulk on the swings and imagining your life in angsty black and white. Your trauma is a film. You are the only person to ever feel this pain, the side character no one gets. This moment right here, is the most interesting thing to ever happen, an indie film waiting to be made. It is Skins on steroids. No one understands you, and boys don’t return your texts, and even your friends like their boyfriends more than you. You can’t blame them. If you had a boyfriend, you would like him more too.
It’s sad that you’re attracted to the nice guys as much as the not-so-nice ones because, really, they’re all the same. Bad boys masquerading as good guys, pimple-faced and too many hormones, still somehow going through life emboldened by the sheer fact they they exist. They’ll make you feel responsible for their feelings, and you’ll always do everything wrong. To win the approval of a boy is to win at life.
You'll want to get married young, but not too young, maybe twenty-three or no later than twenty-five. You will end up married at twenty-one to the exact kind of nice guy described above. It will last two months. You will not miss him when he leaves. The apartment will feel fuller, your days will feel shorter, and there won’t be enough time to do all the things you now feel so empowered to do. You will relish the independence. You will mourn your past self. But you’re not there yet.
Right now, you are fifteen and in love for the first time. He’s sweet, and funny, and the perfect first boyfriend. The Dean to your Rory. He’ll teach you what a boyfriend should be. He will respect you. Call you when he says he will. Take you on dates. For the duration of your five-month relationship, he will be in love with someone else. This is just what it is to be a girl.
I hope you enjoyed this! I’m going to be doing a bunch of these, nods to Dolly Alderton’s essays in ‘Everything I’ve Know About Love’, taking her topics as inspiration and infusing my own experiences. I first came across Alderton through the audiobook of ‘Ghosts.’ It hit that sweet spot of Women’s Fiction with a touch of romance which is perhaps my favorite genre. Didn’t we used to call that Chick Lit?
Anyway, think of this as that time Julia Powell cooked everything from Julia Childs’ cookbook and blogged about it. My hope is by actively reading this book + having a topic set for me each time I sit down, I can bypass the angsty what do I write about phase and just…write.
Next time we talk about AIM—can you hear the screeching dial up already?
Love this!!