Looking back over how my life has changed over the past few months, I have often questioned how a younger version of myself would treat and respond to the changes I have experienced. Would she be proud of me? Would she be shocked or awed at the experiences and choices I have made? My fifteen-year-old self was probably a little bit cooler than I am now; however, I have felt parts of her reverberate through my soul in the recent months more than ever.

My fifteen-year-old self spent a month studying in Amsterdam with people she had never met. She listened to Ed Sheeran’s “+” album before people knew him through Taylor Swift. Her fashion choices were audacious, and her tastes in music and television were even more audacious. She watched Hayao Miyazaki films for a look into sub-culture. And rather than choosing to be a cheerleader or party animal, she had to study and read books to achieve the idea of success she had procreated. Her curls threatened her; she straightened them to conform to what she had seen in magazines and television. Her views on the world were different than her friends, and she felt ostracized in some ways than the society she was surrounded by. She felt the weight of words on every inch of her skin and often folded and contorted herself as a response to these aggressions. She grew thick skin, something that would need in her future endeavors. She toured what would be her future college home with the idea that it could be a reach school rather than a pursuable option.

My fifteen-year-old self had ambition, so much ambition that I often feel that I could have made her prouder, that I could have done something greater to impress her.

My mother often tells me, “Don’t down on yourself, because there is a young girl in your heart you have to protect the feelings of.” The things you say about yourself, the self-hatred you procure damages your psyche, and more importantly, damages her. In the same way, I seek to make decisions that would make my younger self proud of me. The friends I make and choices I have to decide between must in some way reflect what would impress my past self and benefit my future self. Although I began this article by citing that my younger self was a tad cooler than I am now, I feel more at ease with eighteen-year-old self and the environment in which I have chosen and molded for myself over the past three years.

My fifteen-year-old self was brave, but I am braver now. My music taste has aligned mainstream more often than not over the past three years, and I laugh more at sitcoms rather than watching obscure films to try and find myself. However, despite my lack of coolness, I have found that I am more “okay” with myself now, as most people have from the gap between fifteen and eighteen. My curls don’t get straightened as often, and when they do, it’s not because the weight of words has tired me. My outlook on life was not so strange, despite how I felt. I can tell myself on a daily basis that it’s alright to not be alright, and that with change comes discomfort and discomfort makes us grow. My fifteen-year-old self taught me that discomfort is all that we can know and hold onto, because once we become comfortable with ourselves, the world around us will definitely change.

Maybe, in three years from now, I can look back again and find that my twenty-one-year-old self has obtained more strength and wisdom than I have now. Maybe she will understand things I don’t know, like what a food truck even is, how a calculator actually works, and more broadly the ways of the world. Hopefully, she’ll look back in the manner I have today and see- in a difficult to express way- that I was okay then but I am even more okay now.