BY: ANUSHA
Today, I met my younger self at tea.
She sat across from me in her school uniform, bright-eyed and unbothered in the way only children can be. There was still a little mess in her hair, a little innocence in her face, and a kind of confidence that adulthood sometimes quietly steals away. She looked at the world as something wide and exciting, not yet heavy with deadlines, expectations, and the endless pressure to figure everything out.
The first thing she talked about was her new science book, the one she had covered with Doraemon stickers. She said it like it was a treasure. And maybe, in her world, it was. I almost smiled thinking about how much joy used to live in the smallest things. A fresh notebook. A new uniform. A circle of friends. A bicycle ride done alone for the first time. Everything once felt like proof that life was moving forward.
I spoke about college, assignments, and pdfs, and she looked at me like I had stepped into a different universe. To her, school was already a full life. Homework was serious business, project work could ruin sleep, and yet she still carried everything with a strange kind of ease. She even spoke about time as if she understood its value better than most grown-ups do. That was the thing about her — she had not yet learned to fear life. She simply moved through it.
Confidence came naturally to her too. Debates, speech competitions, races — she did not tell those stories with hesitation. She wore them like medals she had earned honestly. Even when she mentioned winning a race with a sprained ankle, there was no drama in it, just a quiet certainty that she could push through. I sat there thinking about how often we become older and softer in the wrong places. How many of us begin to doubt ourselves just when life asks us to stand taller.
The conversation changed when I mentioned responsibility, uncertainty, and failure. She listened, but she did not completely believe me. Failure, to her, was almost impossible. She had too much trust in herself for that. She wanted straight A’s. She wanted to earn for her family one day and clear their loans at once. She wanted to keep her rough copy from grade six because it still held a piece of her. She wanted life to make sense, but even more than that, she wanted to grow into someone worthy of the dreams she already carried.
What stayed with me most was how little she doubted herself. She had not yet learned the weight of overthinking. She had not yet feared taking responsibility before it arrived. She had not yet met the version of life that makes us pause before trying. And still, when she looked at me, there was trust. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that says, I know you will still become who you were meant to be.
That tea table became a strange mirror. On one side sat the child I was — curious, hopeful, fearless in small ways. On the other sat the version life had slowly shaped — more aware, more uncertain, more tired at times, but still carrying the same hunger to learn, to create, to grow. And maybe that is what growing up really is. Not losing the younger self completely but learning how to live with her still somewhere inside.
She left the table with her drawings, her poems, her questions, and her unshaken belief that the future could still be beautiful. I stayed behind with a little more softness in my chest than before.
We never really outgrow the child we were. Maybe we only learn how to speak her language more quietly.
