In her columns, Nathalie Plaat calls on your stories. In April, she asked you what was left of your adolescence. The “News from you” section provides excerpts from your responses, including this one written by a mother and her daughter, who share with the columnist the same love for Courtney Love.
The mother. Reading the column “And the sky was made of amethysts” by Nathalie Plaat, I said to myself not only that I could have written it (if of course I had had her magnificent pen), but also that adolescence , The more it changes, the more it is the same. We’re in there with our 15-year-old right now, big time. With his love for Courtney Love (like mine, almost 30 years ago), his squabbles with his father and their reconciliations in the form of long discussions on rock from years gone by.
It’s still crazy: my memories of being a teenager are still so vivid. The teenager in me is easy to resuscitate when reading a text like this, when listening to Purple all alone while running on the cycle path too… And yet, when it comes from my own daughter, I remain a mother, who has her instructions and her rules to give, her limits to establish. As if my two personalities couldn’t mix.
However, I could tell him, tell him all the paradoxes that I experienced at his age. I was odious towards my mother, who was not that far from her adolescence too. Like me today, she didn’t let anything show. I only saw her as someone who had me on a leash, and I just growled louder. Yet when I felt vulnerable through anxiety or illness, there was only his presence to reassure me (even today, I call him when I need to anchor myself…).
Recently, my daughters went through a closet at my mother’s house and dug up a box with my old diaries. They wanted to read them, get to know me more. I thought the idea was good. I told myself that I had nothing to hide, I was a “good little girl” after all. I still thought it would be good to read a few pages on my own before opening up this part of my life to them.
The teenage girl I found there deeply disturbed me. I was terrified by his rage, his hatred and his confusion. As I reread it, I was almost ashamed of myself. I told myself I was exaggerating. In fact, I acted like a mother towards myself, I tried to rationalize it all, to reassure myself. As if I didn’t know the fate of this teenager! I spent part of the next night swimming in the middle of an anxiety attack.
Finally, I refused my daughters access to this diary, I hid it well in the depths of my house and my soul.
The girl. I’m still 15 years old. I’m really afraid of growing up, but I don’t identify with anyone. Courtney, I love her. It’s my heartstrings. No matter how stupid it sounds, I’m still going to defend her to the few friends who have already heard of her… and hate her. I don’t understand them. What did she do to them?
With my father, our only common ground are the rare evenings we spend listening to rock, from Pink Floyd to My Chemical Romance in the basement, or when we watch THE slord of the rings.
I’m not happy as such, but I’m not unhappy either. I never lived consciously in the age of CDs, and now that music and adolescence are making sense to me, I have Spotify and Bluetooth headphones that I carry around everywhere. Without music, I wouldn’t be who I am, and I’m fine being who I am.
As for Courtney, she’s the one I’d like to be, without being the one I’d like to be. She suffered so much, she embodies the perfection of imperfection in my eyes.
Thank you for proving to me that I’m not crazy, that I’m not alone. Thank you for proving to me that the person I admire more than anything in the world is not only loved by me.
Thanks for waking me up. I’m afraid of getting old…