There’s been a trend going around on TikTok where people are posting pictures of their past selves with Billie Eilish singing, “but the old me is still me and maybe the real me and I think she’s pretty,” in the background thats been heavy on my mind lately. How do you learn to love the old ‘you?’
Its easy to love the me in elementary school with her blunt shoulder-length bob, combat boots, and hot pink jumper. She was a baby. All she wanted to do was write her silly little stories and go on trips with her family to far off places both on and off the page. She’s bossy and arrogant but she’s also fearless and creative and I love her.
It’s easy to love the me in middle school too. She’s just growing into her depression and anxiety. Every night she cries until her skin burns with tears to her father about the unknown because it’s all too much to bear. Every day she slaps on a sarcastic smile and marches up to school with her off-brand Doc Martens tied tight and her glasses straight on the bridge of her button nose. She’s not as fearless but she makes up for it in her snark and her drive to be the best in no matter what form of environment. She’s easy to love.
High school is where it gets harder. Covid divided my high school experience into two halves but I was pretending in both of them. In the first half I pretended to know everything: how to love, how to manage my emotions, and how to chose the people I spend my time with. Then, in 2020, I got my heart broken for the first time, got a prescription for Lexapro, and watched my best friend get shipped off to jail. In 2021 I returned to school and pretended I learned anything by equipping a “holier than thou” disposition and isolating myself from any meaningful relationships. She’s hard to love because she isn’t real.
Freshman year of college me is impossible to love. The time that isn’t spent in a pit of anxiety is spent with hooded, bloodshot eyes and a vacant smile; she’s overcompensating for loneliness with late nights, random bedrooms, and hazy memories. She’s the most damaged. She’s the one who’s nursing a head wound with a vape pen and a six pack of White Claws until she can’t remember what made her so upset in the first place. She’s impossible to love because she’s lying to everyone including herself.
Sophomore year me is easier to love. She rebuilt everything that freshman year me broke including my own heart, my trust in people, and my ability to be alone in a room without the help of a substance. She’s so distracted by protecting her own peace that she can’t even think of getting back out into the world again or being so vulnerable as to becoming friends with someone new ever again.
I think this trend is beautiful because it’s the right message to send young people. You are yourself at your core and you can’t run from that, you can only lean into what makes you yourself but at the same time staring yourself in the face and loving that girl is hard. Holding her by the jaw and wiping those mascara-stained cheeks and kissing that ruddy little nose is the first step to being kinder to yourself which is a daunting task in itself.
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