Sweet 17

Adolescence is often an awkward and ugly time when insecurity reigns. Looking back, Maggie Tiojakin remembers the highs and lows of her teen years, and the special friends who kept her sane.

The year I turned 17 was the most unforgettable year of my life. For one, the Titanic had sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, making it possible for Leonardo DiCaprio to grab hold of my hand and say: “I won’t let go.”

OK, maybe it wasn’t Leonardo but my older brother; and maybe it wasn’t a freezing ocean but the neighborhood swimming pool. And I’m not sure why he wouldn’t let go, but I’m guessing it had something to do with the brand new pair of goggles our dad bought for us to share.

Nevertheless, it’s good to dream. When you’re 17, dreams are all you care about -- and for good reason.

Whoever said it was easy to be a teenager must have had their underpants tied up in a knot. You remember what it was like — torn friendships renewed and evolving into complicated relationships; the world sending us blunt messages of how we should look, behave and who we should strive to be; our parents turning against us and becoming “the enemy”, along with most adults in our lives.

Suddenly, we were rudely uprooted from the comfortable universe of childhood play. Everything we thought we knew was in contradiction with what we discovered, and life’s little ironies gradually took us hostage.

Then came puberty.

Puberty is nature’s way of telling us that nothing in the world lasts forever, least of all our own bodies. Girls grow breasts and boys facial hair; girls ovulate and boys experience the curiously named nocturnal emissions. Sleeping patterns are thrown out of whack, emotional barometers shoot up to unreadable and unpredictable measures and for most of the time we are anxious for no justifiable reason.

We morph into derelicts, fugitives and rebels who cause social concern. And we can do nothing but wait it out. Like a raging storm, puberty hits and leaves our convictions shattered.

On my 17th birthday, my father bought me and my brother a 14-inch TV that would give us access to innumerable worlds created by filmmakers and TV producers from various countries. What answers I could not harvest from my own experiences I plucked out of popular culture.

My new best friends included the handsome pair of FBI detectives who were assigned to solve unearthly matters like devil incarnates and alien invasions; a group of high schoolers who drove BMWs and lived in homes bearing an exclusive zip code; a band of friends who constantly hung out at coffee shops; and a teenage slayer who got to kill vampires by thrusting sharp objects into their hearts. For this reason, the year I turned 17 became an important turning-point in my life.

It was nice to know I wasn’t alone, that halfway across the world there were people who had the same questions I did and were as lost as I was. When I could no longer expect the adults around me to hold my hand and guide me, I held onto images on the television screen and transported myself into “their” world for a while. I also listened to songs, read books and kept my friends close by to keep me sane.

The thing is, there was a time — in all of our lives — when it felt like no one could understand us and we didn’t seem to belong anywhere. Yes, that is adolescence. Like I said before, it’s good to have a dream. Because when we’re dreaming of driving at 100 miles an hour, we wouldn’t want the dream ever to come to an end. We like the way the wind blows in our hair, the sight of the horizon peeking from behind the clouds and the way our hands feel against the wheel. It is how we have always imagined our escape. This is our freedom.

But then we also gradually learn that freedom comes with a price we are not able to pay. When the inadequacies of our imagination begin to crumble against the fine-print of reality, we do what we can to hold ourselves steady. Some resort to vices, while some others simply hang on to each other.

Of course, there is more to life than puberty. Ten years later, at the ripe age of 27, I no longer rely on pop culture to solve the riddles in my life, and the dreams have evolved into something greater — aspirations.

So why Leonardo DiCaprio, of all people? Because he promised to never let go in a time when almost everybody else had given up. And sometimes, that is all anybody needs to get by.

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