You seem pretty sad for a boy so in love

27 Jul, 2026

So how does a 19 year old boy in happy relationships find himself sobbing over the new Olivia Rodrigo album for hours at a time? I’ve been asking myself this over and over since it came out and I might have an answer.
I don’t cry. Almost ever. Not because I don’t want to, or I’m ashamed to. I just can’t. I’ve been on antidepressants since I was sixteen years old, I turned nineteen a week ago. A lot about my life has changed but the medications stayed the same. SNRIs, 150mg and mood stabilizers, 100mg. Every morning for three years. They help, I think. I might be less depressed. They inhibit some of my symptoms at least. But they inhibit everything else, too. I feel very deeply, I’ve always been an emotional person. Everything that happens to me is drastic, every sensation that passes me changes my life. The medications help my depression but they stifle everything else I feel. And I miss feeling.
I’ve spent the last three years tied up in a padded room. I allowed myself to be here, crossed my wrists over one another. I made sure my bonds were not too tight and I sat quietly while the door was locked. Outside the room there is music and tears and laughter and groans of frustration and pleasure. Screams and cheers and banging drums. I love the cacophony and ruckus but my head is throbbing, I need to get away. I need quiet. It’s good for me. I know it is. \ But I find myself with my ear to the door wishing I was out there dancing and sobbing like I used to, I find myself wishing to be brokenhearted just to remember what it feels like.
When the album came out I hadn’t cried in three months. In these three months I had to deal with hate speech against me being used in my home multiple times, a workload and responsibility unbefitting to anyone, and the plans I had for the near future crumbling under my feet. I wanted to cry a lot during those months. I didn’t.
So I can’t cry or feel anything too deeply. My passion is withered and farther than I can imagine. Why this album specifically? It’s not like I don’t listen to intensely emotional music. There are more than enough tear jerkers on my playlist. But I think I know. Stay with me because it might not make sense.
As previously stated, I’m in a relationship. Two, actually. Both with extreme long distance. So I miss them all the time. Every hour of every day. It’s a nightmare, pure torture. So as I began listening to the album, on an early morning bus ride to a seminar, the saccharine and genuine love songs spoke to me. They pierced deep into the pining of my heart and brought up the joy of being in love with the bitterness of how limited I was in expressing it.
When the album made its smooth transition into sadness and the flaws I felt that, too. But why? I couldn’t answer for a while, trying to stifle my weeping on the bus as the songs progressed. I texted all my friends as soon as I could that the album was the masterpiece I’d prayed it would be. Especially considering I’d spent 160 euros on concert tickets to her world tour, not including my flight and sleeping arrangements in Amsterdam. I spent the seminar wondering what was going on with me. Why did I relate so much to these breakup and heartbreak songs? I was not breaking up with anyone. No one had broken my heart. When I told people my relationships were happy and solid, I meant every word. Love has always been my gospel. The final realization is that I was breaking up with someone. But it wasn’t anyone else—I was in the hard process of saying goodbye to myself. Or at least a previous version of myself.
I’ve known who I am for a while. I even wrote about it here, and a lot of what I said is still true. But at the same time, everything I understand of the world is a muted impression of something going on outside of where I am. My life is so different since I went on that self discovery journey. I’ve been on psychiatric medications for three years, I spent a year living without my parents and learned a lot about what being an actual grown up means. I learned I didn’t know anything before.
I’m obviously not the brash teenager I used to be, who lived to spite and stomp on anything I deemed wrong. But I’m not the insecure bumbling boy I was before that, either. So who the hell am I? And how do I figure it out when everything I am is held back by shackles I put on myself? \ I don’t have the answers just yet, I’m working on it as I am trying to piece my future back together somehow. It’s hard to plan ahead when I spent my adolescence thinking I’d die young. All I know is that I’m not who I used to be, but I don’t know who I am now. And until now I’ve been struggling to let go of the vision of myself I’ve been carrying. I’ve outgrown constant anger and rebellion into something I am excited to witness. It’s okay to break up with who I used to be, it’s alright to miss it and wish I didn’t have to. I guess I do seem pretty sad for a boy so in love.