I went back to a place from my childhood and found my younger self still there

I went back to a place I used to hang out at when I was a kid. I was 16 when I smoked my first cigarette there.

I remember lying on a low wall with some friends, staring at the sky and smoking that cigarette as if it were some once-in-a-lifetime event. I can still remember that crazy mix of emotions: anxiety, adrenaline, excitement, carelessness. Such an insignificant little moment, and yet I still remember it clearly ten years later.

Today I went back there.

It almost felt like that kid was still sitting on that wall. He looked cautious, confused, but excited. I was the opposite: empty, bored, completely unfazed.

He asked me, “So... I can’t wait to grow up. I dream about it all the time. What does it feel like?”

For a second, I thought about telling him that it was probably one of the most pointless dreams he could ever have.

I thought about telling him that we ended up living a monotonous life, stuck in a loop where I feel powerless most days. That almost all of our old friends would eventually disappear. That we never even crossed paths with the girl of our dreams.

That all that fear we used to have about life would eventually disappear, but only because we put ourselves through so much self-inflicted pain that we became numb to it. That we would grow emotionally detached, and that no, it isn’t nearly as cool as it sounds.

I wanted to tell him that we would change direction a hundred times, move abroad, meet people and lose others along the way.

That video games wouldn’t excite us anymore.

That, looking back, school really wasn’t that bad.

That having a job gives you money, but the wrong job can slowly take away your identity.

That we would get punched and kicked, and it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much as we imagined it would.

That tears would become rare.

That there was never any guarantee we’d grow up to be tall and muscular.

That we wouldn’t run away from home, and we definitely wouldn’t become YouTubers.

That hugs would somehow start to feel awkward.

That nobody would want to go to the beach in summer anymore.

That staying awake all night wouldn’t be because we were excited about life, but because we couldn’t stop thinking.

That we wouldn’t race around on scooters anymore.

That we would become incredibly good at pretending to feel things.

That we would become jealous.

That we would become selfish.

That the feeling of being part of a close group would slowly disappear.

That some of the people we looked up to back then would lose their minds, others would end up losers, and maybe they had been the wrong people to idolize all along.

That maybe some of our teachers were actually right.

That we never learned how to sing.

And that, at some point, we stopped playing football.

I thought about telling him all of that.

Luckily, he was only in my head, so he didn’t have to hear any of it.

So I just let that kid keep smoking his cigarette, feeling like an adult, living every minute of every day as if it were a new discovery, feeling emotions in a thousand different colors, both good and bad.

Because that kid doesn’t deserve to know what we turned into when we grew up.