Who were you as a child? What activities did you do? What were you interested in? Do you even remember? Or were you excited about growing up? I was mostly a carefree child, living in my own world, and couldn’t wait until the next episode of Sailor Moon. I didn’t think much about what growing up would be like, even if I heard it was “better” than being a kid. I just wasn’t in a hurry. I decided to live my life and take it day by day. I thought getting older would be like an aged photograph browning around the edges, where a sepia vignette would slowly frame my world. It seems like I blinked and now I’m closer to thirty. With some fear and apprehension, I appreciate getting older, as I have accepted myself in a way my younger self couldn’t understand while recognizing my inner child.
The Alienation of Self
At some point in your life, for one reason or another, you start to change. The house you reside in now feels too small or too big, and that comment someone made about the color of your front door rattles in your brain 24/7. Over time, you shove memories and old interests into the closet to gather dust, further distinguishing yourself from the current version of you. Most of us are socialized to live our lives in a standardized way. We go to school for over a decade, maybe go to college for a certain number of years, meet someone, get married, have children, and live our lives until death inevitably comes for us. Frankly, when we look at life as these standard milestones, it feels alienating.
What if someone doesn’t want to get married or have kids? Go to college? What if they get a degree in a field of study they love but jobs in said field don’t pay well? Our lives aren’t meant to be replicated like an assembly line. Various life experiences can pop up, delaying or canceling plans we made for ourselves. This makes us have to pivot, often with fear of the unknown or losing what we’re familiar with.
Getting Reacquainted With My Inner Child
Like others during the pandemic, I wanted comfort which for me meant rewatching old movies and shows from my childhood. I let myself be reintroduced to these stories, worlds and characters, getting lost in the experience while also looking at them from an older perspective.
Admittedly, it helped reinvigorate my passion for film. When I was fourteen, I loved watching music videos and wanted to be a director. In college, I watched the Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie Don Jon and afterward wanted to be a screenwriter. I even took a screenwriting class that I greatly enjoyed, yet have multiple discarded screenplays residing on my hard drive. I’ve watched plenty of films that I feel don’t get the attention they deserve. I started a podcast where I discussed movies from a sociological perspective. I had talked about it for years and released a small batch of episodes. That was great, but I lost interest soon after.
Surprisingly, I keep watching movies and finding new topics to discuss for possible future episodes of my podcast. Even recently, I rewatched The Princess Diaries. It was one of my favorites as a child, and watching it as an adult was a fun trip. It’s known for being a quintessential 2000s teen comedy, but it’s also the story of someone trying to come to terms with a new role in life and needing to step into it despite lacking confidence for most of the movie. That’s relatable to people, even if they’re not royalty.
Taking Our Past Selves with Us
I realize now that in order to grow, I need to keep and acknowledge the previous versions of myself. In many ways, I still feel like a kid and found that the excitement and curiosity I had as a teen still reside in me. I get frustrated sometimes when I see other people look down on others for living their lives as they see fit. Who cares if they like cartoons or want to read young adult books? There is a difference between being childish and having child-like qualities. The more we forget our inner child, the further we alienate ourselves as adults.
Regardless of how others have made us feel, all the previous versions of ourselves helped shape us into who we are today. That means taking the curiosity for the world and the excitement I had from my youth and bringing that with me into adulthood. I think the previous iterations of myself would be happy to see me achieving our dreams or, at the very least, trying to.
Giving Myself Permission
There’s a book by comedian Mindy Kaling entitled Why Not Me? The book, which is her second memoir, showcases stories and lessons from her experiences and how she found acceptance and excitement for that chapter of life. The last few years have shown me that I have never given myself a chance to go after some of the bigger dreams I had as a kid. My teens and early twenties were filled with statements of “That’d be nice someday” or “That couldn’t happen to me.” As if I am somehow unworthy of certain experiences or my circumstances at the time couldn’t possibly change. I thought my dreams were just something to be kept to myself, never to be actualized.
There are things I’ve accomplished based on old interests. I joined student council in high school because I was interested in it and enjoyed event planning. I learned Spanish because I wanted to understand some of my family, but what about the bigger things? What about traveling to distant locations from the films I’ve watched? I would love to go to the United Kingdom with my mom, walking through the British countryside like I’m Elizabeth Bennett. What about starting my own business, even if I have no clue where to start? Maybe it’s due to fear of failure or impostor syndrome, but I hadn’t given myself permission to go after those bigger dreams. I’ve seen other creatives start their careers, and it’s been really inspiring to witness. While I can’t compare my journey to anyone else’s, it’s still reassuring to see other people go after what they want in a nontraditional way or field. Even if I don’t have all the answers, question what I’m doing, or think, “What if I fail?” I owe it to myself to try.
Where Do I Go From Here?
I have a whole list of things I want to do and places to explore with my loved ones. I want to share and create more memories with them. I am so fortunate to have such caring people who not only support me but also have kind energy. They have helped me in my growth, both emotionally and mentally. I know I can count on them for help with problems that feel too big but also appreciate the smaller things like checking in on me or sitting in comfortable silence and watching movies or YouTube. They believe in me when I don’t believe in myself, and I hope I have shown up for them as they need me to as well. They make me want to learn more about the world and remind me how to keep things in perspective. Thanks to them, I can be myself and evolve into the next version of myself.
I have to make space for myself and, more importantly, claim that space without crippling fear or shame for doing so. Writing this personal essay is a step in that direction. I enjoyed writing as a child and started writing poetry out of the blue when I was eleven. It’s been a constant in my life, from musings in notebooks to yearbook captions and countless research papers over the years. It was something I did for fun but started doing solely out of obligation. It was only in the last few months that I decided to write short stories and I’m really enjoying it. I want to be more open and share my work with the world. I don’t know what I’ll be doing in a year or what experiences I’ll have had by then, but I’m excited to find out. For anyone who feels lost or like they haven’t achieved much, know that your feelings are valid and something many of us feel. Try to find the things from your childhood that brought you joy, even if it’s something random. Your inner child will thank you. Here’s to us and all our past selves.
About the Author
Aryelle Sharon is a Scorpio sun and aspiring writer who graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. To chat about movies, she created and hosted the podcast Movie Interaction on Spotify. Originally from California, she can usually be found going to Target with her friends, listening to the same artists she listened to at age fourteen, and pestering her dog and cat.
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