NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Brendan Jacoby, a local bartender well into his mid 30s, struggles daily to live with acute teen angst, the feeling of anxiety about your life situation and knowledge of mortality that usually sets in between the ages of 12 and 14, according to a recent diagnosis.
For over 20 years now, 34-year-old Jacoby exhibited the gloomy disposition, violent mood swings, and confrontational attitude attributed to the teen onset condition. “You have to understand… Brendan is going through alot right now,” said Wilma Jacoby, his mother. “First Pander (his dog) died, then there was the divorce in eighth grade, and now I hear they’re cutting his hours at the Snake Pit. It’s been a rough few decades. It’s only natural to expect there to be an adjustment period.”
Though often dismissed as an “asshole” or a “dick” by strangers, those close to Jacoby recognize the suffering behind his volatile attitude. “Yeah, he can be rough at practice,” said 31-year-old friend and fellow RazorWrist bandmate Dave Kline. “Sometimes he’ll just stop in the middle of a song and say, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ You ask why, and he just says ‘nothing matters, we all die.’ It breaks my heart. What do you say to a kid like that?”
“These feelings are a normal phase of the human condition,” assured Sherman Hurt, Jacoby’s 28-year-old psychologist. “You hope they pass by age 19 or so, sure, but, you know… people are snowflakes.”
Though Hurt strongly recommends anti-depressants, he respects his client’s decision not to take them. “Sure, it’s weird when a 30-something guy skateboards to a therapy session dressed like a teen heading to the Warped Tour and then doesn’t want pills to ‘change him,’ but it’s his call.”
“Nobody really gets what he’s going through,” said Jacoby’s 11-year-old son Brent. “Certain realities are harder for certain people to take in, and there is a tendency to lash out. Carl Jung referred to it as ‘the shadow.’ You just gotta love the little guy and hope he finds his way.”
Jacoby declined further comment when found applying black fingernail polish and staring at a blank notebook on an old fishing dock he “just sort of hangs out on a lot.”
Photo by Kylee Layman.