On the second day of the first year of high school our Latin professor asked us not to sit in the same seats we had chosen the day before. Shuffle around, you still don't know each other at all, he told us. He then asked us to stand up and introduce ourselves to the rest of the class, as we hadn't done it on the first day. Off we went, one by one, banalities with no depth flying around the room -

"Hello, my name is C, I play volleyball and like rock music."
"Hello, my name is M, I have a dog and I don't play any sports."
"Hello, my name is B, I moved here three years ago."

I had braces back then and that day I was wearing, of all things, dungarees. Rocking 1998 like the farm girl I am at heart. I listened to these strangers speak and barely took in anything they said. This bunch would include two best friends, two boyfriends, a girl I would slap in the face in Berlin on a cold November morning, a girl who would move off to Brazil to have a kid, someone I betrayed, someone who betrayed me, a few shit friends, a ton of great ones, and the greatest epistolary relationship of my life.

One guy, G, stood up and went to speak. "Hello, my name is G. It would be useless to tell you about myself right now because next week is my birthday, and on my birthday the old G will be gone." Stifled laughter around the room, a few rolled eyes, a few tilted heads. The professor asked, "Now what do you mean by that?" And G shrugged, looked around the room. "I don't like who I am. So I'm going to change completely. Don't even bother trying to get to know me before next Thursday." He was so adamant, so confident in his plan there was nothing our professor could say to make him waver. 

The time we spent together for the next week was very nice. G was a shy, humble boy of 14 - kind, quite soft-spoken, solid sense of humour. He got very close to G, a girl who'd quickly become a good friend of mine. The two of them would spend most of break time together, chatting and listening to music on a patch of grass. 

Eventually the day of his birthday came. When he walked into class that morning it was like his body had been taken over by someone else completely. He was the same boy but not the same person. From the clothes he wore (subtle changes) to his posture, to his whole personality. He was another G. A right wanker too, by the way. This new G was an arrogant twat who would ridicule other kids and spend his time making fun of professors and classmates alike, an all too intelligent kid who would sit at the back of the room with his feet dangling on the desk. He stopped talking to my friend G cold turkey. He became the guy the other guys would look up to. He became the person I disliked the most for the next five years. 

Looking back, I still ask myself how he was able to change so drastically by sheer willpower. At first I wondered if he was pretending, then I wondered if he had been this person all along and had just decided to show his true colours. This new persona never caved once for the next five years and I admit I was half disgusted by who he had become and half impressed by his resoluteness. 

If I think back to how was back then, I was - unsurprisingly! - really different to the person I am today. There are sides of who I was that I lost, not necessarily thanks to maturity or growth. There was for example an element of confidence and freedom that somehow faded. I was more laid-back, more prone to trying, doing, speaking, loving, playing, falling, scratching, crying, laughing, living. I was, of course, a teenager, and every feeling went to 11 (Spinal Tap reference, and a great metaphor of teenagerhood in general, I believe). But sometimes I do miss my younger self. Sometimes I wish I could wake up one morning and wear again that part of me.