Fifteen is one of the most aro-ace songs in the canon, to me at least. I've been sleeping on it.
There's just a distance between herself and Abigail's experience or being in love. She feels like an onlooker who relates to some things, but also is an alien to the life the others are leaving.
The idea "when someone tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them" is so relatable as an aromantic. Love, at 15, is assumed to be real but this indicates that the person believes but doesn't feel (but perhaps wants to because they're "supposed to".) There's just a distance between the narrator and the experience of romance that I can't quite express.
"in your life, you'll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team" is to me one of her most poignant lines, and it spoke volumes to me when I was a 15 year-old listening to this track in the back of my mom's van and crying. It's applicable to anyone, but when viewed through an aroace lens, it takes on new meaning: you don't have to be trapped in high school romantic politics forever and finding romantic love is not the foremost thing in life.
Unfortunately, sometimes we can't escape it however. And no matter what we accomplish in, say, the year 2023, the world still makes dating the manchild on the football team the greatest thing a woman can do with her life.
Overall, this feels like I am watching other people experience love and sex but not able to feel it myself.
Maybe she knew it all at 15.
