06/04/2025
I Met My Younger Self for Coffee This Day
I met my younger self for coffee today.
Not in a poetic dream or a weird sci-fi glitch, just in one of those moments when life slows down enough to look you in the face, and it looks suspiciously like… well, you.
He walked in with that same wide-eyed hope I used to wear like cologne, loud, idealistic, a little too confident for someone who hadn’t even been properly bruised yet. He was buzzing. Ordered hot chocolate like life was still sweet. Like bills, heartbreak, and burnouts were just rumors.
Meanwhile, I had coffee. Straight up. No frills, no cream. Just the taste of survival and late nights and a hundred times I didn’t quit when quitting would’ve been easier.
He started talking. God, he talked. About dreams, and big plans, and “someday this” and “one day that.” I let him go on for a while. He deserved to dream out loud. He didn’t know yet what life was about to hurl at us. He didn’t know that “someday” often comes with interest fees and emotional back pay.
He asked, “So, what happened to us?”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. Instead, I said, “We made it. Kind of. Barely. But we’re still here.”
Because the truth is, we got hurled. Hard.
By life, by people we trusted, by things we never thought we’d have to carry.
We faced things that tried to bury us. Poverty. Family cracks that split deeper than we ever admitted. Nights we disappeared just to breathe. Days we smiled while quietly breaking.
But we also found grit in places we didn’t know existed.
We built something. From scratch. From scraps.
We became entrepreneurs, of business, of life, of our own damn survival.
He looked at me, like he still didn’t get it. Still didn’t understand how much heavier the world gets when you stop being naïve.
So I told him.
We’re tired, yes. But we’ve built a life that’s ours.
Messy. Complicated. Held together by sticky rice and second chances.
There were days we were so broke we measured food in coins. And somehow, days came when we served caviar without flinching.
We wrote, still. But now, we write from the scar tissue, not the wound.
He stared at me. A little quieter now.
Then he asked, “Do we still believe in us?”
I took a deep breath. Thought about it. Thought about the people who never showed up, and the ones who did—sometimes dressed as doctors, sometimes disguised as quiet moments on a beach.
“Some days, yes,” I told him. “Some days, barely. But we show up anyway. That’s our version of belief now.”
And before he left, he looked back and smiled, like maybe, just maybe, I turned out okay after all.
And I watched him go.
Lighter than me.
But not stronger.
Because strength doesn’t come from untouched skin and untouched dreams.
It comes from what you do after life hurls everything at you.
And you get back up anyway.
Still going. Always going.
