THE NARRATIVE ARC

Meeting Your 12-Year-Old Self

Would the child be impressed with the life you’ve lived so far?

A still from my short film, Game Boy Advance, which is largely inspired by my experiences as a 12-year-old in the late 2000s. © John Pucay

Sometime in the early months of the year, I was talking to several friends when we came across the thought experiment of meeting your child self and explaining your life to them. The conversation got me thinking:

“How would I describe my life to twelve-year-old me if I met him? Would my child self be impressed with what I’ve accomplished and the life I’ve lived so far?”

I realized that my answers would vary depending on my age.

If I had to answer those questions at twenty-three, for example, after I got fired from work, and I was on the verge of getting evicted for unpaid rent because my 3-month job search had been fruitless — all while I struggled to heal from the end of my five-year relationship — then I would probably just stay silent. I wouldn’t open my mouth, fearing that the loneliness and hopelessness of those days might somehow seep into the child.

If my child self had visited me four years earlier, at nineteen, he would have found me in a hospital bed, tucked away in a private room, using the health card from my call center job. I was hospitalized after nearly a year of juggling eleven-hour night shifts, a full course load…