I was a crazy kid. I used to believe that at some point in the future I would become rich and powerful and I would have a company build me a fantastic time machine and I would go back in time and make my life–my younger self’s life–better.
So when I was a teenager, I used to imagine that some future version of me would come back in time and put money in stocks or buy a big chunk of Google or something like that for me. Then I would grow up rich.
Or sometimes I would imagine that after I really screwed something up or whatever that future-me would come back and take over my younger life and she would know all the mistakes I shouldn’t make and all the things I was supposed to do and she would just take over and everything would be wonderful.
I spent years thinking I just had to live through that time until I reached my future self. Then I would be able to go back and make everything better and it would be like none of that bad stuff had ever happened.
I know now that that was ridiculous and I was foolish, but still sometimes I imagine what it would be like to go back and fix all my mistakes. I wonder what my life would be like if I had made different choices at different times. If I’d been nicer to people or meaner to people, if I’d known in advance who was going to turn out to be a bad a friend, or who would have been a better friend.
I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d made different choices.
So I spent a lot of time suffering from classic time machine regret.
More than anything I wish I could go back and say “I’m sorry” to people, or maybe punch somebody in the face that really deserved it.
I find now, as I’m getting older, that all those things that troubled me when I was younger, most of them don’t mean a whole lot.
But there’s some things that seemed little at the time, that get me all disturbed and irate now. Because at the time I didn’t know I should be mad. Or someone would say something or do something and I would just stand there looking at them stupidly because I didn’t know what to do or say or whatever. And if I could, I would go back and I would have some kind of pithy little comment or whatever and I would put them in their place and they would leave me the hell alone and everyone would know that I was tough and I was angry and I wasn’t someone to be messed with.
And so I look back and I feel sad for my younger self, but it’s like a completely different person. I don’t see that girl as being me, because I’m different now.
I look at pictures of my younger self, and I see that at the time, even though I believed I was super fat and ugly and I wore baggy clothes to cover myself up because I thought I was this horribly ugly girl… I was always sure people were looking at me and saying awful things and people were sure I was the ugliest girl at school and everything like that… I look back at old photos and I’m shocked because it doesn’t look like me.
I never look like myself in pictures, I never do. The girl that I see in the mirror is always completely different than the one in pictures.
So I look back at those old photographs, and the first thought that pops into my head is, “Wow, that girl looks really Asian,” and that’s funny to me. But I also think that she looks very pretty, and that maybe if she’d been wearing more flattering clothes or something she would have been cuter.
I look at myself and I realize that I wasn’t fat and I wasn’t ugly and that I actually looked, I don’t know, somewhat elegant. Not quite beautiful, but definitely pretty.
I wish that I’d known it at the time.
Maybe if I could have taken better care of myself at the time–dressed better and things like that–my life would be different too. At the time, my life would have been better because I wouldn’t have always been hiding away and I wouldn’t have been so self-conscious about myself.
Because that’s how I’ve always felt. How I still feel. And I can’t understand how my self-image got so warped that I can look at pictures of myself and think it’s some other person.
Even now I’ll see pictures of myself and I’ll be shocked. I’ll be like, “Who is that?” And it will take a moment for it to click in my brain, and I’ll be like, “Oh. That’s me.”
The image I have of myself is completely different than the one in the mirror. And I wonder if it’s some crazy psychological thing and if I should really talk to someone about it.
But most of all, I wish I could have a time machine and I could go back and make all of that girl’s dreams come true. Because she’s waiting for me. She’s wondering where I’m at. And one day she’s going to turn around and realize that there is no time traveler come to same her. There is nobody that’s ever going to save her.
And she’ll be sad about it, just like I am. Because then she’ll be me.
