I watched the pilot and first episode of breaking bad yesterday. If you’ve seen it, you know the part where he’s in school teaching chemistry but he can’t stop thinking about the murder and the dead/dying bodies left in the mobile home meth lab, some student asks him about what’s gonna be on the test they’re studying for and he just can’t focus. It was weird, it made me think about how I don’t think I ever thought about the emotional problems of a teacher at school. I remember a teacher that my best friend and I used to really wind up, we were really quite fond of him, we liked the guy but we knew how to push his buttons, it was a kind of banter that he enjoyed too but then sometimes being annoying girly teenagers sometimes we would take it a little too far and end up in detention. He ended up telling us about his divorce a little bit, he kind of joked about it and I remember wondering what his house looked like, I tried to picture him alone in his house and I felt sad. I have no idea what happened to him.

Becoming an adult you get to certain realisations at different stages in your life. It happens all the time, like little bits of enlightenment. I remember when I first saw my parents as real human beings, like not just ‘parents’, a label that carries this responsibility that you’re a person who just knows how to handle everything that happens and you don’t have your own life and emotional problems. Having had more life experience now than when I was a teenwolf I can think of how insane it must be to be bringing up kids and having your own life and experiences. When you feel fucked up or heartbroken or stressed or pissed off, disappointed, if work is tough, if relationships are tough, if someone you know has died or is dying, if you have an illness or a private problem and there’s someone who loves you very much and totally relies on you for pretty much everything but doesn’t consider any of those things as possible stresses in your life, how must that feel?

And then those little people turn into mid sized people and start slamming doors in your face and playing music really loud, fighting with you about everything and pushing you really far away. As a teenager you’re trying to carve out your own life, have your own experiences, take control so you own things and create an identity. So no wonder you push parents away. I’ve really been wondering how that feels though. Hopefully it ends up ok and you turn into a bigger person and start thinking about this stuff and realising your parents are real people; you give them more of a chance and can therefore understand and love them better.