꒰ Monday 04.15.24꒱

Last night I was cozied up under my comforter after a hot shower, waiting for sleepiness to set in. I got distracted looking through my phone's photos, as I often do. (my phone has a seemingly endless amount of storage so I have tons of photos from several years)

I have a weird aversion to looking at old art. One reason is that I'm scared that I'll cringe over how bad it is-- which is a good problem to have because it reminds me that I've improved. The worse reason is that I fear my old art will be better than my art currently, and I'll be faced with the idea that my skills have declined.

As I was looking at my old art last night, I felt neither of those emotions. Instead, I acknowledged that my work from back then really wasnt as bad as I thought it was at the time. It still holds up but there were areas that I've since improved on. For a moment I was finally free from cringe..... I realized if my art from back then that I was so ashamed of and hid away still holds up after enough time has passed for me to view it with fresh eyes, then my current work that I'm equally as ashamed of must be good too. I felt a little more motivated to share more of my work with the world and be more open creatively with my friends who I have been distant from in terms of creative stuff because I'm afraid of being judged, LOL.

I fell asleep and had a dream. In my dream, I was in a cafe in my hometown where my local artist friends hold their weekly cafe sketch. I sat at a table and found that the girl sitting next to me was none other than my highschool self. She had short hair, glasses, a brown corduroy jacket worn over a black sweater, and plaid pants that I've since given to a friend. I remember this in detail because this was one of my go-to outfits when I was 16. She was drawing a face? one of the eyes on the face? and I tried to join in and help her draw the other eye. She made some sort of comment about wanting to prove to me that she could draw well and I said something to the effect of "hey, it's okay if youre bad, cause that means I've gotten better."

I sat in silence for a bit. I've thought about what it would be like to meet my past self before, and I always debated wether or not I should share with my younger self the fact that all her current worries had in fact worked out exactly as she had dreamed. It would probably bring her a lot of relief and a lot less pain, sure, but what if she works less hard when faced with the knowledge that her future is set? I usually conclude that I should not tell her, but realistically I know I probably wouldn't be able to resist. My dream self couldn't resist either.

I turned to her with a smile and dispelled what I'm sure was her biggest worry. It was for that reason that I was eager to blurt out the words, "In the future, we get accepted into our dream school." I don't really remember her reaction, but I remember it was a positive one. I continued with "and we've gotten some job opportunities too" because I knew it was probably the second biggest worry on her mind.

I thought about what to share next. The third and final thing I told her about was that in the future, she will meet incredible friends who she will forge the closest of bonds with, and she'll never feel lonely again.

Immediately after this I think I got distracted from this scenario because my dream transitioned into one about minecraft. But i still woke up feeling as though I had experienced something very profound. I'm sure my 16 year old self still exists in me, so maybe I really did speak with her and helped her heal a bit.