Love=Drug?

In "Youth In Revolt" by C.D Payne, Nick does a lot of pretty intense stuff just to get his "One True Love" Sheeni back. Sheeni is away at a sort of french boarding school while Nick is in the public school (which he transferred to just to be with Sheeni before she abandoned him for like the third time). Nick is very suspicious of Sheeni and wants her to get expelled from her french school. First he befriends a girl whom despises Sheeni and would be plenty happy with her being expelled. Than (with the help of his new friend) Nick drugs Sheeni's best friend. While Sheeni is out in her friend (who is constantly asleep because of the drugs)'s car with a potential hunky french speaking guy friend, Nick reports the car stolen and gets both Sheeni and her friend in a lot of trouble. Nick also is semi-fake having an affair with a girl that Sheeni is not too fond of to make Sheeni jealous and come back to him. It seems Nick will stop at nothing to be reunited with his One True Love.

I have never been in this supposed "love" idea, but I sure hope that if I ever am it won't take over my brain and make me do insane things for it. Wow, it sounds like I'm describing a drug. Is love a drug? It really seems like it. Love intoxicates your brain, makes you experience emotions you have never before, makes you make dumb decisions, makes your friends and family think "what the hell is wrong with you? You haven't been acting the same lately." These symptoms sound a lot like those of someone on drugs. Drugs are bad for you, we all know that... So is love bad for you? When you are like recovering from being an active drug user you feel awful and really really wish  you could go back to doing drugs, this sounds familiar, break-ups. The one thing I can say about love that I can't say about drugs, is that it doesn't kill you (1 point for love), but then again when your doing drugs the symptoms only effect you, while when your in love they effect you and your lover...(1 point for drugs).

Maybe it's not just love and drugs, maybe when your really caught up in something and devoted to it, it takes over your brain and makes you a little insane. But is this really bad all the time? No. Being devoted to something is often good, and gives you purpose, I think that as humans one thing that we really need in order to not go insane, is purpose. So I as long as you still know who you are and you aren't just this thing that your devoted to, it's not too bad. But still, don't do drugs.

Growing Up... Parents Included

In "Youth in Revolt" by C.D. Payne, Nick Twisp is a hormonal, skeptical, parent-loathing teen, who because of all these things is (as you may have guessed from the title) in revolt. Nick has recently moved out of living with his pregnant-with-a-dead-drunk-truck-driver's baby mother, to live with his father and his father's 19 year old girlfriend. Nick is moving in with his dad because while living with his mom he recked her car, set a major fire throughout the town, and was extremely rude to his mom's boyfriend (soon to be feance). Nick did all of this for many reasons, the main one being: he passionately despises both of his parents.

Sometimes while reading this book I think, Nick is too hard on his parents, I mean like all parents they make mistakes but they probably love him. Then I realized how I don't want to say awful but... very neglectful and harsh his parents are. His father often makes "jokes" about wishing he didn't have to see his son once a month and pay child support, he also is very competitive with Nick, especially about girls. Nicks mother on the other hand, barely pays attention to him, dates men who are very mean to Nick, and punishes Nick very harshly for everything he does. 

I think that this is one thing almost every single teenager has had to deal with, if you haven't, oh just wait it's coming. I know that I am taking Nick's side mostly in this book, and maybe some parent would take Nick's parent's sides, but I totally feel for him. My parents, I believe are probably much better in ways than Nick's parents are, and I really do love them... Sometimes. Other times, I very much do not like them. One thing that I can totally relate to Nick about (and maybe you can too) is his parent's ignore him. My parents definitely don't ignore me as much as his do, but there are always times where I really wish they would just pay attention to me and respond. Maybe part of the reason why Nick did the things that got him sent to his father's house that I stated in the beginning, he did because he wanted his parents attention. I know I have done  things to get my parent's attention, for the better or the worse. 

When are times that you have despised (or just not been too fond of) your parents? How have you ever tried to get their attention? COMMENT.