I was a weird teenager. My mother was actually worried because I

In the hush of youth, when many hearts bend toward the first tremors of dating, one voice speaks like a clear bell over still water: “I was a weird teenager… I had all this desire to pursue my passions… so I didn’t have any emptiness to fill.” In these words, the singer testifies to an ancient law: that a vessel brimmed with purpose does not rattle for want of ornament. She names her altars—ballet, then sailing, then music—and by this triple pilgrimage shows that love of craft can be its own companionship, its own hearthfire against the draft of loneliness.

The elders knew this: a youth yoked to a luminous task is not impoverished by solitude but enriched by attention. The world will often fret, like the concerned mother in the saying, when a path strays from the common road. Yet “weird” in the oldest tongue means “woven by fate.” To be a weird teenager is to be plucked early by one thread of destiny and to follow it into the loom’s hidden chamber. There, the hours lengthen, the senses sharpen, and the self grows inward roots that drink from deeper springs.

Notice the order of her longings: not dating first, then craft as embellishment; rather ballet, sailing, music—each a discipline that teaches posture of soul. Ballet instructs the body in reverence and restraint; sailing schools the will to read the wind and accept correction; music opens chambers in the heart where language dissolves and truth hums. In such apprenticeships, the human hunger is fed by mastery, not distraction. This is why she says, with quiet defiance, that there was no emptiness to fill. Purpose had already filled the bowl.

Consider a true tale from our own age: at eighteen, Tania Aebi cast off from New York Harbor in a small boat and set her course round the globe. While her peers drifted through romances and brief enthusiasms, she learned the grammar of stars and the mood of oceans. Squalls became teachers; calms, meditations; landfalls, examinations of skill and spirit. When she returned years later, the circumference of the world had become the circumference of her character—drawn by sailing, not by the fleeting validations youth is taught to chase. She did not lack company; she was companioned by purpose, and that purpose kept her intact when the horizon was empty.

Such lives are not indictments of affection, but reminders of sequence. Love is strongest when it flows from a self already formed, a cup already filled. To seek another to plug a hole is to make a siphon of the heart; to seek another as overflow is to make a river. The quote therefore carries an older wisdom: let passions carve rooms inside you—through ballet’s discipline, music’s patience, or any craft that demands both body and breath—and then, if dating comes, it will meet a house with lit windows, not a cavern asking to be furnished by a guest.

There is also mercy in her mother’s worry. Parents sense the winds that buffet their children and fear the chill of isolation. Yet even a loving mother must learn the difference between solitude and desolation. Solitude is a well where one draws; desolation is a ditch where one sinks. The former is cultivated by vow, the latter cured by it. When a young person’s desire is braided to a worthy practice, the solitude becomes workshop, temple, and compass.

Let this, then, be the teaching handed down: Fill your days with labors that answer your deepest names. If you feel emptiness, do not rush to crowd it with faces; till it with practice. Choose one demanding path—an art, a science, a service—and give it the mornings when doubt still yawns and the evenings when fatigue bargains. Learn to befriend the quiet; it will tell you what to do next. And should love knock, you will not clutch at it; you will welcome it as a fellow traveler, not as a crutch.

Actions for the road: (1) Name three passions and bind each to a weekly ritual—class, lesson, or hour of deliberate practice. (2) Keep a “wind log” as sailors do: record the forces that move you and how you adjust your sails. (3) Guard one hour daily from noise; in that hour, train—stretch for ballet, chart for sailing, practice for music, or tend the craft that is yours. (4) When others call you weird, hear “woven,” and remember that a woven life is strong. Thus shall you find that the heart made whole by purpose has no emptiness to fill—and is, therefore, most ready to love.