“Doomsday” by Lizzy McAlpine is one of the few songs I can listen to all the time because its theme about the inevitability of a relationship ending speaks to me. While I understand the song is about a romantic relationship, I relate to it on the level of friendship. I give my all when I feel an immediate connection with someone and become close with them quickly. When the relationship feels unreciprocated, it’s devastating. Friendship is the place where I feel understood, and if that is unstable, then I feel like “pulling the plug” and ending the relationship on my terms, like Lizzy sings. Doomsday isn’t just about a romantic relationship, it is about how we figuratively die when things fall apart, even in friendships.
No one wants to see the end of any relationship. Endings are painful, but Lizzy wants it to feel painless. “I don’t want a violent end,” she sings, but that is nearly impossible. The end of any relationship is a “violent end” because real relationships are significant. I don’t mean the casual kind of connections; I mean the ones where any distance or separation is noticeable. It makes a person’s life become strange and different, and it’s lonely. Whether a friendship or a romance, it hurts when the relationship just fades away without any notice or reason, and the spark of energy dies as each person changes. People naturally grow up and change their minds, so that might mean disconnecting from the relationship. For that person, this may be needed and a valuable lesson, but it doesn’t reduce the pain of the death of a relationship in the moment.
Teen relationships are intense, and when they end, it can feel like the world is ending too. That kind of emotional turmoil is not just drama, it’s real. When it happens over and over, it builds into a pattern of doubt and hopelessness. Lizzy makes me feel seen with this song, and that I am not alone. The teen years represent a stressful transitional period. We’re not little kids anymore, but we’re also not yet adults. In this “in between” stage, we have the burden of trying to find a lot of the answers for ourselves. That’s why we lean so heavily on our relationships, and why we don’t want to leave them even if we know we should. “I think there’s good in you somewhere. I’ll hang on til’ the chaos is through,” sings Lizzy. These lyrics illustrate the hesitation to end friendships because no relationship is all bad. In fact, thinking of all the good times makes people more likely to stay around longer, even if there are patterns of disappointment in the friendship.
Teen relationships tend toward extremes, and it feels unfair to be treated well one moment and then badly the next. So much of a teen’s life is based on friendships, and so it makes sense that their instability or failures would emotionally impact us in a big way. There is so much social drama around who is going where and with whom, and fights and fractures set in. Because teens often feel annoyed with their family, or disconnected from them, when a teen loses a friend, or feels disconnected from one, it’s like the world is ending.
The fast cycle of teen relationships contributes to our depression in general. As a result, teens do worse in school, there is no motivation in daily life, and it’s unpleasant to be around so many people who are hurt and in the process of healing. This type of cycle keeps teens knocked down, and if they feel like they are dying all the time, then they feel hopeless and worthless.
Many teens rely on friends for emotional support, especially when family feels distant. When friendships fall apart, or even when the love is not reciprocated, the person’s support beams begin to fall and mental health starts to deteriorate. If the emotions of feeling hopeless and worthless are ignored, they will not just disappear; they will get buried deeper and worsen. If teens don’t heal their emotional wounds, we risk living in an emotionally numb world, stuck in survival mode, afraid of real connection.
If emotional pain goes unacknowledged and unhealed, suffering teens are likely to grow into adults who carry emotional exhaustion into every part of life. They are likely to become partners who fear vulnerability, parents who struggle to connect, and employees who feel unmotivated. A world built by people who were never able to healthily process their pain will be a world of emotional silence and unresolved hurt. Teens who feel depressed, lonely, drained, hopeless, and worthless are in crisis, and without intervention, there is a danger that society may regress. In fact, in recent years, The New York Times, and The Washington Post have reported an increase in teens who suffer from mental health concerns, and since COVID there has been an increase in the number of teens who have taken their own lives. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Lizzy’s music doesn’t just describe the pain, it shows that teens are not alone in it. And maybe being seen in that way is the first step towards healing, and towards building a better, more emotionally-open world. We can choose to grow into a generation that changes the emotional climate. Instead of repeating the cycles of disconnection, we could build a world with more understanding, empathy, and honesty. So many teens think that they are stuck in these cycles with no other options for healthy connection, but realizing there might be another way is powerful. It requires actively working on yourself, including going to therapy and engaging in self-reflection. Choose to believe that there is a way out, even if the process is long and strenuous.
A good place to begin is going to a trusted adult. Unfortunately, many teens don’t have an adult they can trust, but many also never try for fear of being misunderstood or misheard. But if we don’t try to heal, there is little hope for an emotionally-healthy world. I don’t have a perfect solution, but I truly believe that however down you are feeling, you can make choices to change the feeling. No matter how hopeless we may feel as teens, remember that there is so much life ahead of us, and it’s always worth believing in a better life no matter how many Doomsdays a person has experienced.
Comments
Log in or register to post comments.