At aged 16, I sink into my bed’s covers. I wrap myself in the warmth despite the ninety degree heat outside my window. I’m weighed down by my own anxieties and thoughts. My teenage brain is a wretched, cruel one. I’m a month out of a hospital and my medications bring me down into a cool sleep.

At this time in my life, it’s difficult to imagine my brain or my life being any different than they are. It’s hard to imagine a calm, content mind not drenched in hormones and sweat. It isn’t easy to see a life without the people in it now, without the current stressors and joys.

The rational part of me knows that all of this will change sooner rather than later. That my brain will balance out and that hormones won’t be the main contributing factor to my decision making forever.

Of course I know this, how could I not? My future is foreboding and in the forefront of my thoughts. Worries and wishes combined, all surrounding the subject of my future swirl around my head as I sleep on this May afternoon.

At aged 26, I sink into someone’s arms. I’m wrapped in kindness and I smile as I hear a laugh atop my head. Wind dances outside the window of a kind home that is presumed to be mine. I’m unable to tell where exactly I’m living. Am I still in Georgia? Am I in New England? England itself? It doesn’t seem to matter, because I seem happy as I’m released from the loose hug. It also doesn’t seem to matter whether the man in front of me is a husband or a friend, because either way, he makes me grin.

At this time in my life, my brain is less cruel. My brain has some logic to it, some hope laced in its cells. My hair is long and flowing, carefree as my head seems to be. I know that this adult must have some worries, everyone has worries. But her worries don’t weigh her down, they don’t drive her to what they’ve previously driven her to.

This fantasy is simple, filled with grins and banter I don’t quite understand. As 16 year old me wakes, it’s with a grin. The idea of a calmer life, a kinder life is a good one. I find that I need that comfort for the time being, that the idea of me a decade later is a grand one.

I find myself telling a friend of my dream, confessing that I wish I could skip ten years of my own life. It seems like a concerning message, one that would bring a frown to their face. Instead I’m told: “Me too.”