It’s weird, I hated every minute of it and was so glad to see the back of it, but for some reason I find myself sorta day dream wishing for exactly this more frequently than I’d like.

I think my mind has sort of gamified it now and that first run was a bad run that I want to retry. Ironically despite wanting nothing to do with it ever again, I kind of want to relive it not just once but many times over. I’d like to do a run where I pay attention and learn and do very well using my adult skills and accumulated knowledge but I also most want to do a run where I just do a way better job of making friends and having girlfriends and a very active social life in general. I realise how cliché and shallow that is, not least because I’m pitching both those things as opposites which they aren’t necessarily and also that that’s what I would do with what amounts to time travel when it’s so frivolous and trite. But I just, I saw those people in school, effortless social butterflies that people felt good being around and I’d like to have experienced that. I wasn’t a hermit or unloved in school, but it was a huge struggle with a lot of pain and rejection and I was so paralyzed by crippling depression and insecurity, I’d just like a glimpse of what experiencing it on easy mode would have been like.

I know the people I’m thinking of that seemed to have an easier time from afar had plenty of problems and probably some insecurities of their own that I just didn’t see or appreciate in my little bubble but there was a burden I carried that comes from an extreme lack of confidence that some didn’t have to shoulder and I would like to go through that particular period that can be a very special and formative time for a lot of people without so heavy a burden marring it. Second time around I think, that fear and insecurity that plagued everything while I was living through it would be greatly eased.

Then again, if I had to try to deal with cruel teenagers again with my grown up sensibilities I don’t know for sure I’d really do much better, teenagers are experts at cruelty and finding your weak points, there’s a good chance my confidence would be very quickly shattered leaving me with only the misery of having to go through it all over again. Also, on the point of wanting to have “had girlfriends” as others did, if I’m going back with my adult memories and brain development, well… Yeh that’d be pretty fucked up, I’d probably end up having to forego that except this time by choice.