Today I sorted out my room. It really needed it and I managed to get ride of a lot of stuff. The main reason I'm sharing this is that I went through a lot of my childhood toys and it brings back memories that now feel very bittersweet. To see toys I once loved and carried everywhere to being toys that stay under the bed. From things that I adored and made family trees and stories for to dust covered animals. It also didn't help that I had to consider what toys were worth keeping and what's worth giving away for someone else to love. Many of them hold memories from my childhood of being a young child filled with an imagination that could create a constantly changing story for them while also keeping some things the same. Now, a lot of them are in boxes to be taken to a charity shop in hopes of giving another child those memories but it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. My mum suggested maybe giving some of them to my half sister (she's only 1, nearly 2, years old and is my dad's kid. It's not important for this) and I just can't. It's one thing to give something filled with memories to a stranger that you don't have to see loving a toy and it's another to see someone close to you changing the meaning and memories and backstories for them.
I think the reason this is all affecting me so much despite being something so simple and relatively irrelevant or unimportant, but it's a reminder of who I once was. A little girl that loved penguins and had a bed covered in stuffed animals. Now, while some things such as the stuffed animals are the same with there just being less of them now, many things have changed. I've realised I'm trans, my interests have changed. I'm now 18, not 8, and I'm preparing to go to university and to study history. When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be a farmer. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's strange seeing how much I've changed. With it having been my 18th birthday last week, I've seen so many pictures of myself when I was a toddler and little kid. I use to have long blond hair and now it's naturally brown but dyed black along with it being short. Looking at pictures of myself, I've realised I haven't girly or wanting to dress fem in years, years before I realised that I'm trans. While I may not be out irl, this week has just been a reminder of how much I've naturally changed.
I'm not the same person as when I was a kid and that's okay. Everyone says that growing up is to change and I think there's some truth in it. I'm still me but I've just figured out more about myself.
