On Childhood, Past Selves, and Coming Out The Other Side

I’m not sure why I always put off writing until the same day every week, but here we are.

It still blows my mind I went the past two years without writing as much as one or two posts. I completely avoided public writing altogether. I think I was afraid.

It’s always hard to fall back into something you used to loved. 

When I first started, I wrote daily. I believe that went on for at least three or four months. I couldn’t get enough, I just wrote. I wanted to share my every thought and it was the first time in my life where I felt like so much more than all the opinions from others. 

Taylor Swift re-released her album Fearless today. I remember being thirteen or so at the time when it came out. I was barely a teenager and had so many ideas about what the world would be like. I was young and fresh-eyed. The idea of opportunity seemed endless. I hadn’t known anything outside of school or my hometown bubble. It was all I’d ever been exposed to.

I still live in Maryland now, but holy shit, leaving your hometown after high school completely separates those parts of your life. I didn’t realize it at the time. I moved where I am now solely because I had to. College didn’t work and the family moved, so I had no choice. I couldn’t go back to my childhood home like so many others around me. I was in a whole new area with completely different people.

Listening to Fearless, it took me completely back to being that teenager in my green-colored room, surrounded by remnants of my childhood. I think that’s the thing I miss the most about having a childhood home. I can’t go into my closet and discover something when I was nine. 

My childhood is boxed up in a tote somewhere or left behind in that house.

One of Taylor’s songs Fifteen completely hits different now. I remember being fourteen when I first heard it and feeling so lucky that I was the target for that song at the time. Back then, it had me excited for high school and everything it would bring. Hearing a 31-year-old Taylor recite it now, it’s a love letter to our teenage selves. High school went nothing how I planned nor did life, but listening to it now, I hear a homage to a young girl with very big dreams for the future.

 

We don’t realize at the time how young we really are. Much less, how fast it all goes by. 

 

Being a teenager is something a child always looks forward to. The movies or tv shows play it out like it’s the best part of your life. The proms, football games, even the relationships or friendships you discover. 

We don’t realize that 13-18 is a merely five years. It’s been almost seven years since I graduated this year. It all goes so quick yet at the time, everything feels like the end of the world. I can remember all the dramas I got in to in my school years. It means nothing now. It was petty issues based solely on us all being young and hormonal. 

Hearing Fifteen today shows me how far I’ve come since then. I teared up at the damn thing.

Being the generation that grew up on the internet, it’s strange to be able to go back to where you were as a teenager. I can look at Facebook memories and instantly see a status I posted in 2009. It’s all documented. I used to write those silly Facebook surveys you saw on MySpace. 

I think I had a good two years on MySpace before everyone transitioned to Facebook. I wish I had more time on it honestly. Shit was legendary. I have no access to my old MySpace now due to my old email expiring (thanks aol) but oh man, if I could see my twelve year old angsty self posting quiz surveys, I would feel complete. It’s wild seeing what you meant the most to you back then and now, we’re in our twenties trying to figure out adulthood.

I used to do the surveys and lay out my feelings there, but shit, I don’t think my sixteen year old self would be able to comprehend that I blog often now. I’ll share my honest thoughts on Instagram in a caption or lay out my thoughts in a post. 

My teenage self kept to herself just as much as I did as a kid. I was shy as hell and only really let those in my inner circle see the real me. Otherwise, I’d keep quiet and try to fade into the background. 

I feel like I’ve blocked out a lot of school years, but the thing I remember most in my elementary days was never raising my hand and the sheer panic I felt when I was called on. I never wanted to be seen by my peers. I’m still not sure where it stemmed from, but sometimes kids are just shy. Maybe there isn’t a deeper meaning in everything.

I don’t think my kid self could’ve seen me being so open online. It’s a small blog but even posting publicly sounds so foreign to who I was growing up. I was such a quiet kid and seeing how I am now still surprises me.

I’ve struggled with social anxiety and depression as long as I can remember. It dates back to childhood honestly. I remember being sixteen and slowly starting to put a name to everything I felt. I thought I was being dramatic and trying to get attention by ‘diagnosing’ myself. Thing is, if you’re struggling with something alone with no one around, it isn’t for attention. We don’t have those down days or social struggles for sympathy when no one knows what is going on. 

I tried to talk myself out of my mental struggles for years. I thought I was being dramatic or like I said, looking for attention. I felt unseen all my life so this was my way of gaining it, y’know?

I went to therapy for two sessions as a teenager, but it was all too overwhelming. I felt I had no reason to complain because so many had it so much worse. I didn’t pick up therapy again until I was nineteen. It was only after those two years of therapy that I saw how true all of my feelings were. I was never looking for attention, I was dealing with a mental battle. I spent all of my life trying to go uphill without acknowledging the very real emotions I had.

It’s weird how Taylor Swift re-releasing her old album brought all of this up, but it did. 

 

I do it unknowingly but I see that I definitely try to compartmentalize times in my life.

 

The person I was before I moved and after is a drastic change. That comes with age, of course, but moving directly after high school makes it even easier to forget about my ‘old’ life. 

I’ve met new people now, found new hangout spots. Everything has changed and sometimes, I forget to acknowledge that. 

I see my day-to-day problems and immerse myself in them. I get caught up my current life story without realizing how far I’ve come over time. 

Writing on here feels second nature now, but I remember the first night I unveiled a public blog post. It was back in 2016. I was terrified to see who would read it or how those around me would take it. It was such a monumental moment and now, I see it as another Friday night writing for my Sunday post. It’s so simple now and I’m caught up in other things.

I forget how shy I used to be or that moment of fear when I first pressed publish. 

It’s simple to move on with our lives and focus on the next best thing, but shit, when we don’t acknowledge how far we’ve come along the way, we forget our past stories. The stories that made us who we are today. 

I’m only twenty-four now, but I’m miles more confident than I was as the girl who heard ‘Fifteen’ for the first time. I’ve gone through a million life changes and not remembering that feels like a tragedy.

When we’re feeling down and out, we’ve got to remember how far we’ve come already. The person we were five or ten years ago would be amazed at all that happened since then. The good, the bad, all of it. 

 

We’ve got to see both sides of the coin from back then to appreciate the present moment now. 

 

The amount of good or bad days we’ve experienced in the past decade should be nothing but motivating.

The good shows us how wonderful life can be. Those moments where we feel true happiness or feel grateful for where we are.

The bad reminds us that we made it through. I’m sure every single one of us can remember a night where it felt like we had hit rock bottom.

Those moments where it felt like things couldn’t get any better or worse. They were at an all-time low.

Thing is, we went on. We continued to live in spite of those bad nights or the thoughts that followed. Soon after, we experienced those good nights again.

It’s all an ebb and flow.

I know my teenage self would be proud of who I am today despite the bad nights that came along the way.

Nothing is as serious as we make it out to be at the time.

All that matter is how we feel about who we are.

Not our past selves or who we could be the future, but today – in this moment.

Looking back on the past is something self-help books don’t want you to do. They want you to forget past and future and look at the moment.

 

Thing is, it’s hard to appreciate the present moment without seeing what it took to bring us here. 

 

The past can’t be changed and we can pull a million ‘should’ve, could’ve’ thoughts out of our heads about what might’ve happened instead, but it’s when you look at the past as a teacher that you can ever move past it. 

We grew up exactly how we did for a reason. We had those make-or-break mental moments for a reason.

It’s not about forgetting the past completely to find a better future, but using the knowledge we’ve gained to enhance where we are today.

Reflecting is never a bad thing.

Sometimes it feels good to live in the past for a moment to admire where we’ve come to be.

Don’t let the books or those around you tell you otherwise.

Whatever we do that brings us to a better mindset is exactly what needs to happen.

I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been down only to look in to old journals and immediately come out of it. 

New perspective on old experiences can completely make you appreciate where you are today. Don’t brush the emotions that come up in those experiences.

The future is something we always dream about and want to perfect but without reflection and proper understanding of our current state, our future can become something we don’t care if we reach.

Understand where you are today and where you came from.

Without it, we stop caring about anything.

We don’t give a damn where we are now or where we’re headed. We give up.

It’s only in the midst of that apathy that we don’t realize how much further we can go.