If you asked me at the age of twelve where I saw myself at sixteen and a half, I guarantee my idea would be nothing like the me of today. If you told my past self about me, she'd probably be appalled. I was an annoying kid. By that I mean I was very opinionated. I thought that there were two kinds of people in the world: People who tried to be stereotypically cool, and people who knew how to act like themselves. I rejected anything trendy, because I didn't want to be in the first category. I was anti Marvel, anti Vans, anti video games, anti makeup, and so on.

Things started to change in fall of 2021, when I was almost 14 years old. Someone I was following in an online writing community sent out a copy-paste promotional comment about her Harry Potter fanfiction. I felt like I had to read it just because she asked me to. Not that I had any idea what I was reading; Harry Potter was one of the many things I had rejected without a second thought. I always assumed the series was violent and weird. My friends, however, loved the books. With the amount they talked about the series added to the story I was guilt-tripped into reading…I was starting to get curious. When I found a beat-up copy of the first book at a yard sale–half of the cover missing and the name 'Peters' written down the side in sharpie–I asked my parents if I could get it. That was the beginning of the end of my strict opinions. 

I loved the book. Right from the start, everything was described in such vivid detail. It felt like the characters were real, like they were my friends. I connected deeply with the book, and it seemed as if magic really could happen.

This was towards the end of summer. By late September, I was halfway through the series, having downloaded some of the books on my tablet. I found myself laughing harder than I ever remembered laughing at a book, and discovered my eyes watering at other parts. I'd always loved reading, but a book had never felt as alive as these ones did. I don't know if it was that, or some strange hormones, or if it was because the walls inside of me were breaking down, but the world seemed to come alive, too. The trees were turning yellow and orange and the sky was brilliantly blue, and the whole world felt open with possibility. I don't know what exactly I was feeling–surges of creative energy, a happiness so sparkling that it was almost too much–what was that? Is there a word for it? I felt all of this unbridled emotion swirling and churning inside of me. I was truly in love with life. 

While all of this was happening, other changes were going on in the background. My sister was starting to listen to different music genres, including k-pop. I hated it at first. Then she showed me a song called Dynamite by a band named BTS. I didn't necessarily like the song to listen to, but I thought it was funny and I went around the house singing it as a joke. Fast forward to late November or early December of that year, when Kennedy was watching more music videos from the "Dynamite dudes." She was sitting on my bed with the laptop, and I started to get sucked in when she played "ON". After seeing "Life Goes On" and "Stay Gold", both of us became obsessed. I remember my family teasing me at dinner, "Abby likes a boy band?" It was out of character for me, but I really did love their music. What pulled me in was how real the band was. The way they expressed sentiments and deep feelings amazed me. Soon we fell into the meme culture, consuming the whole spectrum of content. How could something be so serious and so stupid at the same time? I remember lying on the floor in my bedroom sharing earbuds with my sister and listening to BE. It was almost Christmas. We went to the mall over winter break and bought the album and a poster we knew our parents wouldn't love. We sat under the pink tree in our room watching interviews and funny edits. On Christmas day, I woke my sister up by playing Jimin's new song, "Christmas Love" in her ear. That afternoon we annoyed our parents by pulling up a bunch of BTS's music videos on the TV.

If Harry Potter was a breakthrough, BTS was an awareness. I started really thinking about who I was and what I did and didn’t like. I’d never really considered self love before BTS, but they made me stop and think about how I viewed myself and the world. I got a lot of second-hand inspiration from them (at this point direct fanart was still out of the range of things I considered acceptable for some reason). The song “Inner Child” alone set off a chain reaction of at least six poems that I wrote about growing up. I cringe looking back at those poems now, but they were important to me at the time, and writing them helped me to figure a lot of things out about myself.

Christmas passed, bleeding into January. I downloaded Spotify exclusively for BTS, but the music service started recommending me other k-pop artists, too. Tomorrow X Together was one that kept popping up, and when I finally went to their profile, one of the first songs I heard was titled, "9 and Three Quarters". I thought it must be a sign. I listened to their latest release, a Japanese album called "Still Dreaming". The music was full of power and energy and life. They sang about dreams, magic, and imagination. The more I looked into their lyrics, the more shocked I was that they seemed to say exactly what I'd always wanted to. For me, Tomorrow X Together felt like the culmination of everything that'd been building up inside of me for the past six months. They were the summary of everything I'd learned and grown to love.

Tomorrow X Together had a complex storyline woven throughout their music videos, which I spent a ridiculous but utterly wonderful amount of time unscrambling. The story was about friendship and magic and life; the teenage version of the My Little Pony episodes I watched as a kid and the musical version of my favorite Harry Potter books.

TXT was my first concert, all the way in Chicago. I was the one who convinced my sister and Dad to go, and that concert was most of the motivation for me to keep my first job. Standing in that theater full of twinkling lights, singing along and dancing to the music I connected to so strongly, I felt a bond growing with people there who I'd never met and never would meet. The music brought us together, under different dreams and different stories. We found comfort and motivation in the same place. It was like magic. I was struggling with social anxiety when the group's second tour was announced for spring of 2023, but on the way to New York for that show I ordered my own lemonade from Tim Hortons. Somehow I found the confidence to give out freebies to other concert goers and participate in the random dance play. The day after the concert I was goofing around on top of a cement block in New York City, not caring what anybody thought. 

I don't have an exact date for when I picked up that first Harry Potter book at the garage sale, but it was about three years ago. Now fall is here again. The air is crisp and alive, and I'm free to reminisce about a younger me, the me just learning that she was allowed to like popular things, and unconventional things, and whatever else she liked. The cages in my head actually meant nothing; I'd made them up out of thin air. I still don't watch Marvel, video games refuse to hold my attention, I don't own a pair of Vans, and I've probably worn makeup a total of four times in my life. Still, I don't hate these things like I used to. They're not who I am right now, but maybe they'll be a part of me someday, or maybe I'll never care about them. Either way, it's fine. What matters is that I let myself enjoy what makes me happy. 

I believe in magic in the world around me. I believe in people, real or made up, that give you hope. I believe in imaginary friends, and in music that brings people together. I believe in feelings. I believe in myself, and that I'm someone worthy of love and of loving whatever I want to. My younger self would hate me now, but I'm not her anymore. Sometimes we need to change. We're meant to expand, to test the limits, explore the world. It doesn't help anybody to be trapped in the confines of a biased mind. Sometimes we need to change and fall to find out who we are.