I think dictating whether or not you past self would be proud of you or not is not accurate. Your past self had different goals, knew different things at the time and wasn’t the same person as you are now. My younger self would probably be confused as to why my high school life wasn’t me sitting on my bed journaling about boys with some fuzzy pen. So much as changed since I was a child I don’t think there is anything for her to be proud of.

Not that she wouldn’t be happy about what I have been doing but that she would be so confused as to why so much of my goals have changed. She would be confused why my grades aren’t all 100s, where math started getting difficult and why I couldn’t fix it. She wouldn’t understand why soccer wasn’t as fun as it used to be and why I almost quit. She wouldn’t understand that she doesn’t only stare at boys and that makes her scared. I think she might be happy about my friends and that I finally grew out my bangs, and how my art has advanced so much but I don’t like giving myself illusions about past me.

I feel that I have lived my whole life revolving about my past goals, I was a straight A student, I wanted to be a lawyer, I did nothing wrong ever, I was like the perfect child. But as I grew older those things got harder and it made me angry as I tried to search for past me. I have since then let those feeling go but it’s still disappointing to see a 65 handed to me. So I guess what I am trying to say is to not let your past self get to you, it held me down for a long time and I think holding yourself to past standards is frustrating. I am proud of you 🙂