on dreaming big

reflections on healing my inner child and growing up

Much like self-care, healing your inner child is an amorphous concept. There isn’t one way to heal your inner child, though my therapist in college believes there is. 

She often tried to ask me to split myself into pieces and speak with each part, including my childhood self. However, this made me feel even more fractured than I already felt before. I’ve never really felt like a whole person in the first place, and splitting myself up made me even more uncertain of my own humanity.  

Growing up, I never really dreamed on my own. My parents told me I should be a doctor (yes, I know, very stereotypical), so I drew stethoscopes on photos of me and read the books they gave me about human anatomy. In elementary school, all my classmates talked about getting into colleges like Stanford and Harvard, so I worked hard to get good grades, hoping that it would better my chances at an early age. 

There were instances when I allowed myself to dream a bit. I would film movies with my Barbie dolls and watch YouTube videos to make props for them. I would sing made-up songs to myself, pretending I was on a radio station while building Legos. But these were moments I kept to myself, hidden away from everyone for I believed that I couldn’t possibly carve my own future when it was decided for me by others. 

Early on in my life, I never really got to have dreams of my own, mostly just trying to have other people’s. 

Once I was in middle school, I finally gave myself permission to start dreaming on my own. I leaned into my passion for writing and would spend classtime scribbling paragraphs into my dedicated writing notebook I carried around with me everywhere. I discovered my favorite television shows, movies, music, and media, and I would passionately express my interest in them, even though everyone else would roll their eyes at my ramblings. 

In high school, that all changed when I became ashamed of dreaming again and chained myself to reality, part of the reason I’m so fiercely independent today. While my classmates were out partying at the beach, I would be at home taking care of my younger sibling, practicing my sport so I could get recruited to play in college, and figuring out how to access state-sponsored therapy without my parents knowing. I didn’t have the time to dream when surviving each day was an accomplishment in and of itself. 

While I’m grateful that I quickly learned responsibility at a young age, I also regret not really getting to daydream and take my time to grow up. I realized this when I visited my cousin the summer before I started high school and she gave me the Little Prince book as a gift and told me that this story reminded me of her. The last time she saw me was as a young child, full of potential, and she wanted me to keep in mind that while growing up, I should never lose that creative drive that only she had ever been able to really see. 

“Remember that where you are now is where you once dreamed of being.” 

For me, healing my inner child is honoring the dreams I never allowed myself to have now that I’m in a place where I can do that. In the past year, I held a concert where I played an entire set of original songs I’ve written over the years. I now write for several established TV-related publications, and I’ve self-published multiple zines of my original poetry. I’m only at the very beginning of my creative journey, but every time I get to write, I’m acknowledging that younger version of me who never believed they could ever create something worthy of anyone’s attention. 

As for my other interests in film, television, music, and other media, I still am chasing the endless high that comes from hopeless devotion to things that have shaped me during my formative years. My friends all joke that I have a problem with buying concert tickets (they’re right), but live music is one of my favorite experiences. In short, my motto is life is short, so wreck your bank account to see your favorite artist perform three times in one year. 

I don’t think my past self could even dream of the life I’m currently living. Sure, it isn’t perfect. I’m writing this while in the apartment of my friends who I’m visiting for the long weekend, and although I’m happier than I have been in a while, I still have been struggling lately not to spiral about my family life and whether or not I’m going to continue playing sports after what happened in spring.  

The best I can do right now is try to live in the moment and look forward to exciting experiences to come. One of the most surreal experiences will probably be meeting Dan and Phil. Yes, I still watch their videos in the year 2024. They’ve changed my life in ways I couldn’t even begin to express, but it’s suffice to say that when I first started watching them in 2016, I didn’t think I would make it to 18, much less 20 years old and finally meeting the people who I’ve looked up to for almost a decade. 

In a way, I suppose that I’m proving to myself that I can dream big and achieve those dreams for the future. That perpetual impermanence won’t last forever, but these memories will.