Teenage Heartbreak Is The Best Heartbreak

Maybe the humiliations of our youth made us the men we are today.

When I was 12 I went on a school trip to France and fell in love with a girl from the year above. She sat next to me on the coach and introduced me to flirting. I couldn’t believe she was showing me so much attention. I was naive enough to assume it meant we were more or less an item. But then we got back to school the following week and she more or less ignored me.

A few weeks later she took me aside in the playground and told me she had started dating the hardest bloke in the school, a notorious 15 year old psychopath who looked easily big and grizzled enough to be on the pro-darts circuit.

I didn’t really understand why she made such a special effort to break the news to me about her love affair with the school lunatic. I just remember clearing my throat and saying ‘congratulations’ in an involuntarily high pitched squeak. Inside, my heart quietly broke for the first time.

A couple of days later I came face to face with the psycho in question.

He was walking into the art block as I was walking out, accidentally blocking his path. He looked me up and down, something seemed to register in his eyes, and he punched me so hard in the chest that I literally took off and flew back into the building, crashing against a wall.

I told my best mate this story the other day and he said that if that had happened to him when he was twelve he wouldn’t have gone back into school for a week. I brushed it off. I mean, not trying to boast or anything, but mine was the sort of school where being smashed into a wall by a child-man on your way from art to double physics was not that unusual.

I was actually quite flattered at the time. I took his act of completely disproportionate violence (I mean, he could have just said ‘excuse me’) to be evidence that I was regarded as a serious love rival. As I sat wheezing on the floor of the art block, waiting for the air to return to my lungs and for the other kids to stop laughing at me, I allowed myself a small sense of self-satisfaction.

Stories of adolescent heartbreak and humiliation are a right laugh aren’t they?

I’ve got loads of them. Once, a couple of years later, another girl I had a crush on split up with her boyfriend and, while presumably on the rebound, asked me if I’d join her on a week’s holiday at one of those organised summer adventure camps in Wales.

A week’s holiday with the girl of my dreams? When I was just 14? Yes, I thought my ship had well and truly come in. We travelled to the Brecon Beacons together on a coach and, on arrival at our secure compound for outward bound teens, we were spilt up into separate boys and girls dorms. Although we were not officially boyfriend and girlfriend yet, I confidently assumed that we would be meeting on neutral ground later that day for some fairly robust French kissing.

That night there was a welcome disco for all the kids.

I attended with my new dorm-mate, a lad from east Grinstead called Aaron whom I’d met hours previously. When we got there I introduced him to my de-facto girlfriend and the pair of them hit it off right away. In fact, after a couple of dances, they disappeared with each other completely for about forty minutes. On their return, they announced they were now ‘going out’ with each other. Laugh? I almost called my mum from the payphone to ask if she’d come and collect me.

Instead, I spent a lonely and miserable week in the damp Welsh countryside, reluctantly taking part in orienteering exercises while watching Aaron French kiss the girl I had come there with. Don’t cry for me, readers. I was just a lad who loved too much.

What has all of this self-pitying nostalgia got to do with anything, you might ask?

Well nothing really - beyond me getting it off my chest. I find it helps to turn the micro-tragedies of your past into comic anecdotes wherever you can. It takes the sting out of them. Because all of them do sting. Yes, they are funny in retrospect but all those little dramas leave their scars. Most of us are too proud to admit that to ourselves - let alone anyone else - at the time.

In AA, step four of the recovery programme involves doing a detailed audit of every bit of pain, sadness or conflict you have EVER experienced. Not just the big stuff that really damaged you but even these little throwaway heartbreaks that you might not have thought about in decades.

It seems pretty stupid and arduous. But I guess the point is to acknowledge that all of the little paper-cuts you pick up through life can accumulate into bigger wounds. Did the seemingly inconsequential liaisons of my youth contribute, in some tiny way, to my eventually developing a batshit booze and charlie habit in my thirties? Or was it something to do with my dad leaving or my mum dating the milkman or my older brothers locking me in the airing cupboard? Or was it none of those things? Did I simply love getting on the beer and gak so much that I just couldn’t stop before it was almost too late? Fuck knows to be honest. Maybe a combination of all those things. Or maybe I was just born a twat.

What I do know is that acknowledging pain or sadness when it happens is important.

Rather than worrying about losing face you should realise that the tougher thing to do is hold your hands up and say: ‘That’s right, lads, I’ve had an absolute nightmare and - to be honest - I could do with a cuddle.’

Hiding the way you feel is exhausting and makes everything so much harder. You’ll never move on if you spend all your time worrying about appearing cool or unflappable. It’s pretty transparent when people put on that sort of act anyway. I happen to think that overt displays of pride are for uptight dickheads who haven’t got the balls to ask for help.

We’ve all had crap times, big and small. Lying about their significance to yourself or others is a waste of energy. Own that shit. I did - and look at me! That lonely and rejected dweeb I describe above grew up to become one of Britain’s most sexually attractive and physically powerful human males. Still, we can’t all be Sam Delaney I suppose.

This week’s podcast with Sam Thomas

Sam Thomas is a writer, broadcaster and campaigner who formed the charity ‘Men Get Eating Disorders Too.’ He joined me this week to discuss his experiences of bulimia, PTSD and alcoholism. A really interesting bloke with tons of insight and an interesting take on how all mental illnesses are inter-connected. Give it a listen.

Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

@calm 0800 58 58 58

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@ChairtySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/