h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

this is something quite close to the heart, but I had a tricky few years at the end of my teens - I guess we all do. The romantic, dreamy idealism of my childhood didn't want to let go, despite - or perhaps because of - the evident harsh realities of real life approaching full-on, steam-train fashion.

When I did finally let go of my childhood, it was as if an elastic band, taught and frayed at the edges, had snapped, launching me deep into a most cynical, rational, sceptical and even uncaring state of mind.

I'm perhaps just beginning to reconcile these two diametric personas, they've been bitter enemies for some time now, but I think at long last they've been reunited as friends. If I met either of my past me's now, I think they'd be pleasantly surprised with the outcome. And yet the more I think about how I've changed, the more it strikes me how much I've stayed the same...

I don't think the child-me would have liked the me I am now. I've been thinking back on the kind of child I was. I was horribly shy, particularly serious, completely non-agressive, well, except maybe when I was fighting with my kid brother!

Back then I think my major ambition was to get out of school. I wanted to get married, some day, have 3 kids (don't know why 3), and just be a housewife. It was the way girls were raised then.

Now: I'm an agressive person who still holds some career asperations (a career? What was that when I was a teenager?). I will talk to anyone who comes within my realm. Speaking in a boardroom barely takes any preparation. That would have terrified the child. I did marry, but 1 child was all that was in the cards for me. My older-teen self would be pleased that I finally married my steady from high school days. My life isn't always comfortable, like I imagined it as a kid, but at least it isn't dull. I've stopped taking myself, or life seriously, and that would shock the teenage-me. And in a lot of ways, I've turned into my mother, which I swore then I wouldn't do. Its not all bad, Mom was a really great person.