Stages of growth

Growth is a complicated thing.

We often think about it in a positive lens, like shedding our old skin to reveal something beautiful beneath it. Growth can be finding your fashion style, pushing yourself to start a new hobby or learning to love a part of yourself you’ve hated. But, it can also be letting go of a friend, giving up on something you no longer enjoy or picking up a bad habit. We are always changing — positively or negatively — and I think part of growth is accepting both the good and bad and knowing that there is always more evolution awaiting us.

Recently, I’ve realized that, for me, acknowledging growth has two stages: The first is where you look back on yourself and are embarrassed by what you see, and the second is where you grow past that embarrassment and feel only nostalgia about the person you used to be.

I come to this conclusion on a random Tuesday night, when I start scrolling through the depths of my camera roll — 13,000 pictures and counting — in my effort to avoid the homework I desperately did not want to complete. I start in the present day, scanning the memories still fresh in my mind. I smile at pictures of friends from our recent group trip and think of what I wanted to do with them next weekend. I see a picture of food I ate at a restaurant lately and make a note to return some day soon. I see a picture of myself that I don’t like and delete it without a second thought. 

Soon enough, I scrolled all the way back to my early high school years. My hair is parted an inch further to the left, and I am wearing clothes that I won’t even think of buying now. There are bad attempts at makeup and videos of me dancing on stage. Looking at these pictures is like biting into a lemon; my face scrunches up, and I think, Why did I do that? 

I don’t know how past-me walked out of the house looking like that or stepped on stage with those subpar moves, but current-me is mortified and, honestly, sort of impressed. This embarrassment, however unpleasant, is how I know I’ve grown past these high school years. It’s how I know that I am more comfortable in my body to wear the clothes I’ve always wanted to and how I know my passion for dance has thrived and improved exponentially in college. It’s how I know that I prefer the person I am today, and I think that is something to be proud of. No matter how embarrassed I am of these pictures, I won’t dare delete any of them now; they are evidence that growth has occurred.

If I keep scrolling, I will soon reach my middle school years. Here, the pictures of myself disappear entirely and are replaced by an aggressive amount of photos and videos of everything else in my life (I used to capture the world around me like I was trying to make a stop-motion, animation film). My middle school self didn’t leave me anything to be embarrassed about because of how insecure and embarrassed she already was back then. 

I don’t feel any shame when I find the few pictures I do have of my younger self; I only look at my baby-face and messy ponytail and awkward smile and wish there was more for me to reminisce on. I have reached the second stage of growth with my middle school self, and I only feel nostalgic about both the good and bad. I miss the friends I had and wish we didn’t grow apart. I miss the Latin dance studio I used to go to and wish I still took lessons. I miss being able to play the guzheng as well as I did then. Most of all, I wish I had left my current and future self more to miss, and that is how I know I have grown to love myself more. 

In high school, I grew past cowering away from the camera, which will leave present-me plenty to reminisce on once I manage to move to the second stage of growth. And, maybe one day, I will look back at my current present and be embarrassed by what I see, but I’ll know that, further down the line, I will grow past that and cherish who I used to be.

Harmony Liu is a sophomore majoring in English, originally from Queens, N.Y.