10 Things I Wish I Could Tell My 10-year-old Self

"Hindsight truly is a beautiful thing."

As a now twenty-year-old woman of colour whose primary hobby is overthinking, I find myself enjoying periods of introspection and reflection quite often. At the moment especially, my reading week from university has given me a bit of valuable free time in which I've come home for a few days to relax and recharge.

There are times when I look back on my childhood and my teenage years; the latter admittedly only ended four months ago, so let's not get dramatic. It surprises (and sometimes disgusts) me to remember the ways I used to dress, talk, think, the friends I used to have, etc in comparison to the present day. Coming home this week has certainly triggered this sort of reminiscence, as my family home is full of some truly embarrassing photos of younger me (there are a few in the living room of my awkward pre-teen years which I definitely did not consent to being displayed, by the way).

When I look back at old photos, I feel as though I can only really remember very little of what my day-to-day life was like at each age, since growing up seems to go much faster than you realise at the time. However, I do clearly remember the sort of things I used to worry about, how self-conscious I became and the petty little arguments with friends that I used to think would be the end of the world. Arguably, life never gets easier, but having reached this age I feel at least slightly more knowledgeable, and certainly more mature in the emotional sense, than I was say, ten years ago. I still now sometimes find it hard to be as kind to myself as I know I should, but I especially wish I could go back in time and give all this kindness and advice to my younger self; she could also have definitely done with it. 

So, hypothetically (though sadly it's not an option) here are ten things I would tell my younger self, as hindsight truly is a beautiful thing.

1. First off: you’re not ugly, you’re just literally one of only three non-white people in your entire primary school. 

Granted, those huge round Harry Potter-esque glasses aren't the best look, nor is the tight slicked-back ponytail your mum makes you wear every day but don't be so mean to yourself. You're not ugly just because you don't look like anyone else. You live in a small town in Kent, of all places, where naturally there is a laughable lack of diversity. In fact, throughout the rest of your education, most of the time YOU will be considered 'the diversity'. 

2. PLEASE keep practising speaking Bengali at home with your parents, or twenty-year-old you will beat herself up for not doing so. 

You'll regret losing that invaluable chance to be bilingual (as it's so much harder to pick up when you're older) and it’ll trigger an identity crisis in the future when you're rightfully called 'whitewashed'. After all, it's so much less of a flex to tell people "Well I can understand it... but I can't speak it.".

3. Don't pay any attention to that random white boy at school who commented on the amount of hair on your legs during PE. 

You’re Indian, that's just how it is, and there's no reason to feel (or to make anyone feel) bad about it. You're ten years old! Don’t spend the next few years not knowing how to shave properly and giving yourself so many razor-related injuries, all to make sure no one notices or comments on that again. Just don't.

4. You DON'T need to buy anything and everything that Zoella says is good - whether that's makeup, skincare, room decor, any of it. 

This will apply a bit more in a few years from now, but keep in mind that there is no need to be relentlessly pestering your mum to buy you a £15 Morphe foundation brush or Joe Sugg's new comic book that you're never going to read (you don’t even like comics). Just because it seems like everyone else has them, is not a justification - and they don't.

5. You really are living in a bubble. 

Which is a good thing in some ways, and a bad thing in others (see point 1). It's nice to be a child in a pretty, rural countryside town, but you’re going to be exposed to so more many exciting things, meet so many cool people and have so many more opportunities if you work hard enough to eventually be able to move out and go to university in a bigger, better place. The world is SO much more than just where you happen to live.

6. Take more photos! 

You’ll be going into your teenage years soon and will inevitably go through a rollercoaster of fluctuating self-confidence, body image and self-worth. But, in the future, you’ll actually be kind of sad that you won’t be able to show your kids or grandkids many photos of you when you were a teenager, simply because at the time you hated how you looked so much, to the point of deleting all photos of yourself and always refusing to get into photos with your friends. Or worse, exclusively taking whatever few selfies you took with those dumb 2013 Snapchat filters that just morphed or covered your entire face.

7. Don’t start obsessing over girls who are growing faster than you. 

You’re only ten years old, relax; most of these things are just a matter of genetics. If you can’t physically change something, give yourself a bit of peace and try not to worry so much about it. This ties in with a friendly reminder that food is fuel! Start getting that in your head early on, as well.

8. It’s much better to be nice than to be popular. 

As much as I hate to feed into the common stereotype, my experience at an all-girls secondary school showed that it really was a breeding ground for cattiness. That, and thinking it made you 'cool' to be unnecessarily hurtful to people who are just minding their own business but simply don't happen to be dressed the same way as you. Get over yourself, and stop pestering your mum to spend £40 on a pair of Topshop Joni jeans that you'll only wear a few times a year on non-uniform days.

9. Please try and stick with the extracurriculars you're currently convinced mum and dad are maliciously forcing you to do. 

As with speaking Bengali, it’s so much less cool to now say "I used to play the piano / do ballet / swim, etc". You’re incredibly lucky to have the chance to learn all of these things in the first place, so make the most of it. Or you'll become an adult with arguably very few hobbies or talents.

10. Keep reading! 

At this age, you can read an entire book series in just a week, which only makes it sadder when you get to age 18 or 19 and genuinely barely have the attention span to sit through a ten-second TikTok. Especially since now, in your degree, most of the things you have to read are compulsory academic philosophical texts written by old white men from centuries ago (which isn't always quite as fun).