Lately I’ve been having dreams about a younger me. About is perhaps a misnomer: I’ve been dreaming as her. Me at seven, eight, nine. Me on my old grade school’s playground, shepherding my little sister. Me in my grandmother’s driveway at dusk, catching a last glimpse of her front porch light as we pile into the car, feeling that sleepy safety you feel as a kid at the end of a grown-ups’ party.
In truth, childhood plays in my head more like a dream than lived reality: vivid colors, larger-than-life surroundings, but as if they happened to someone else. I can remember an outfit I wore, other people’s expressions, the music we always played in the car. But my own feelings and reactions, the inside of my head — I almost never do.
I was what you’d call a “creative” kid. I made up stories for games and puppet shows, put together homemade magazines, submitted poems to Cricket magazine, wrote songs and led my sister and cousin in choreographed concerts for my family. (That one makes me laugh, looking back. I’ve taught myself to enjoy performing over time, but dancing is still off the table.)
There is a video from my kindergarten year that is somewhat infamous in my family. The mother of one of my classmates had taken it upon herself to document our school year, and in one segment she asked each child what they wanted to be when they grew up. When little Paola flashes up on the screen, she bares her fox-sharp teeth and says, An actress. When she’s asked why, her eyes dart off to the side for a minute, and then back to the camera, before she replies with an even bigger grin and a little flip of her blonde bob, Because I’m pretty. As if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. My family loves this video — something about my naïveté, my smile, the indomitability of my spirit at that age. For me, it’s baffling, a curiosity: seeing some version of me so at ease with herself, so glad for attention. It almost doesn’t make sense.
That’s because there is a parallel truth about little me: I was wildly, almost pathologically shy. Scrawny and quiet, always daydreaming or reading, I got my fair share of attention from both teachers and bullies. I usually had only one or two close friends a year, and often they were much louder, bolder, prettier girls than I was. Outside of school, I wouldn’t even give my own order at a restaurant or ask for something in a store. My parents tried over and over to give me practice talking to other human beings — always well-intentioned, but often leaving me in tears.
When that happened, it would get labeled a tantrum, and I would be scolded for being dramatic — a word I learnt to avoid attracting at all costs. When my parents’ divorce coincided with my first really challenging school, something in me seemed to harden. After a while I sang only for myself, showed my stories to no one. I kept reading books that took me to other worlds, but only because my own made me want to shrink away — desperation, now, instead of wonder. The girl with the mischievous fox-grin had gone underground.
It’s an age-old story, though, isn’t it? The child who grew up and, by doing so, lost something. As author Marlon James says, there’s “something about the idea of dismissing the imagination as a sign of growing up” that has persisted, especially in stories. Just look at Peter Pan, or any film having to do with Santa Claus, to see that belief — not just the faith itself, but also the confidence behind it — is seen as something belonging to the child, something that later has to be either let go or recovered, depending on how optimistic the plot is. I have managed to coax some of my first loves back into bloom: music, which I manage to have fun with despite a penchant for melancholy, and writing, provoking seven years of NaNoWriMo participation and yes, the birth of this very newsletter. But the belief, the breezy certainty of that girl in the video, escapes me still.
Over the course of this year, I thought what was happening was growing up in fast-forward: trying to protect my health and that of those around me, forced to deal with the reality of being jobless and transient, carrying all the world’s anxieties like Atlas. But I realize what has actually happened is that I have slipped back into childhood — in all its humblest elements. I used to cry only rarely, but this year has turned me into a human faucet. I get easily irritable, a baby who hasn’t slept enough and won’t stop fussing. I defer to distraction: a filling meal or a comforting movie. I think we have all had to be children, a little bit: escaping into fantasy when we can, when reality becomes too much to bear; charmed by the most unexpected things, tempers flaring at the slightest provocation. Our brains constantly screeching, I’m hungry! I’m tired! I want to go outside! When is it over?
We have recovered something of the child, all right, but now it seems a howling changeling — not the creature of wonder we wanted.
These days, maybe in part due to the dreams, I find myself wading through memory, old photos and recollections, reaching for what has always eluded me: the me I was then. What I wanted and liked, but more than that, what made me feel like I was enough. Like a gold prospector scouring a river, I push aside layers, hoping for my younger self to come up shining under the water. To her, patience is stupid, the future is an endless fog. So in this present that seems to last forever, what does she want? What can I give her?
One morning the other week, ahead of a stressful phone call, I took out my set of acrylic paints — untouched since college — and brushed color on paper. The shapes that emerged were abstract, usually my least favorite thing; but anything real would be something to get right, and I wanted something that had no right.
On a neighborhood walk, I noticed a fallen leaf beaded with rainwater. I crouched on the wet pavement, moving my head to see all the ways the light shone through each droplet. I must have stayed there for at least a few minutes, people passing me by and throwing me glances. I just couldn’t look away.
Admittedly, each of our current realities looks different — working from home, working at risk of exposure, taking care of kids, job-searching, some alone or with roommates. Finding space for our own imagination or pleasure might feel indulgent at best and impossible or insensitive at worst. But if our younger self can make us spiral into despair, clamor for more sleep, eat too much or not enough — why not give it the attention it is so desperately asking for? Can’t we also get back the sweeter things about that time — a moment of literally or figuratively coloring outside the lines?
At the grocery store just yesterday, I noticed a roll of Halloween stickers sitting on the next till — usually reserved for accompanying children. Just before gathering my bags, I gathered the nerve to ask the cashier if I could have a few. Barely blinking, he tore off seven of them for me.
I couldn’t tell you why I did it — the shadow of that painfully shy girl still flinches from talking to strangers sometimes. I do know that along with the stickers I carried home a secret piece of delight, and under my face mask, I could swear I felt a hint of a fox-grin.
Parting notes—
Why You’re Regressing to Your Teenage Self During COVID-19 (TIME)
The surprising way nostalgia can help us cope with the pandemic (National Geographic)
In my state of limbo, I’ve been delving into Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for the first time. Described as a “creative recovery,” so far it has felt like a deep dive into my self, my long-held fears and beliefs, and yes, my childhood dreams and wants. If you need some guidance, I recommend buying it from your favorite bookstore (not Amazon!). Here’s a funny article/review on the book.