#thoughts about nostalgia and weirdly packaged existential musings

[zillychu]

I'm half asleep when I get up from my bed, and sit down next to my ten-year-old self.

"You're an adult. You're not like me." They say.

"I'm still you." I reply with a sadness I wasn't prepared for. "I'm still just like you."

"No," they insist, "you're an authority. An other. Something I don't understand. I don't see myself in you."

"But I see myself in you." I'm desperate, and I don't know why.

"How?"

"You know about infinity, right?" I already know the answer, but I ask anyway.

"Yeah." They look up at me from the scribbles of Pokemon in a math notebook, from the stuffed animals arranged in a town made of blankets. I don't see the life in them anymore, but I remember what it was like to.

"The universe is infinite."

I pick up a stuffed animal. I still have this one, it now sits on a shelf untouched for years. The fabric is still just as soft, just as loved.

"So adults might know more." I say with conviction, surprised it's my own. "But we all carry the same amount of unknowing. We're all just as lost."

My ten-year-old eyes stare at me. I stare back.

"Why is this important to you?" They ask.

"I don't know." I answer truthfully.

"Maybe I'm just still scared of being left behind."