I met my younger self for coffee, and she was really quite freaked out, tbh…

Have you seen the ‘I met my younger self for coffee’ trend that’s been doing the rounds on social media lately?

It’s a heartwarming trend, in which the person imagines sitting down with their younger self, and telling them all the ways they’ve changed — and, in almost every case, how much better their lives have become. The cumulative effect of watching these videos is a warm, fuzzy feeling, which comes with the knowledge that things always work out in the end, no matter how bad they might seem right now, and, because of that, it would be impossible not to feel comforted and inspired by them.

Unless, of course, you’re me.

Because, so far, most of the people who’ve taken part in this trend have been people who are currently in a much better place in their lives than they were when they were younger: and, that’s just not the case for me right now — which means that, instead of feeling all warm and fuzzy, this week I’ve been catapulted head-first into a downward spiral of despair, confronting feelings of failure and inadequacy all the way down.

It’s not been much fun, really, all things considered.

“What if things DON’T work out in the end, though?” I thought, feverishly scrolling through Reel after Reel of people talking about their ‘glow up’ and how ‘everything happens for a reason’. “What if you met your younger self and she was disappointed rather than reassured? What if you had to tell her she never did get out of debt, or find her ‘tribe’? What if you had a successful career that you loved, say, but then you got hit hard by the pandemic, and after that, AI came along to destroy what was left of your livelihood, and now you’re desperately trying to reinvent yourself, while struggling to pay the bills? What would you tell your younger self THEN?”

But no one’s making viral videos about that incredibly-specific scenario, unfortunately; which means it falls to me to be the one to over-think what it would really be like to come face-to-face with my younger self — who fully expected to have both a New York penthouse and a Malibu beach home by now, and who was honestly a bit of a drama queen1 — and have to admit that, right at this moment, things aren’t actually all that great for her, really.

So here it is…

 

I met my younger self for coffee today.

We were both on time, having arrived early and waited around the corner/in the car so we could arrive at exactly the right time.

(“I take it we don’t ever get over the anxiety, then?” she asks when we meet…)

She ordered a latte, I ordered a cappuccino, because I finally figured out that those giant mugs of latte always leave me feeling a bit sick.

“How come our teeth are so white if we’re still addicted to coffee?” she asks, holding a hand over her mouth as she talks so I can’t see the ‘peg tooth’ the dentist told her could literally never be made to look ‘normal’.2

“Turns out that dentist was talking rubbish,” I explain, pleased to be kicking this off with some good news. “We get Invisalign, then veneers. Then more veneers. We’ll be paying for our teeth until we die, but we’ll never regret it.”

“What happens to our face, though?” she says, looking at me with undisguised horror.

“Er, gravity, mostly,” I reply, raising my own cup to cover my jowls. “And, FYI, none of the skincare we buy actually works, so this is what we end up looking like. Sorry.”

“Shit,” she says, putting her coffee down. “But Mum always said I’d ‘grow into myself’? I was kind of counting on it. Maybe we should just get drunk if this is what’s ahead of us? Do you want a vodka and coke?”

I hesitate.

“Still,” she says, brightening. “I expect we get an amazing personality to make up for it! Do we?”

I immediately summon the waiter.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “We’re going to need something stronger than coffee for this. We’ll get wine, though. We never really liked vodka; we just drank it because we didn’t know what else to get.”

“OK,” she agrees. “As long as you’re paying. I mean — you are paying, right? Seeing as you’re a proper grown-up now? You must have some money?”

I don’t want to tell her she’s probably earning more than I am right now, so I put the wine on my credit card. While we’re waiting for it to arrive, I quickly bring her up to speed on who’s still alive and who isn’t, because I know that’s what she’s been worrying about the most. She’s relieved to hear that most of the major players in her life are still with us, and accuses me of lying when I tell her she marries that guy she just met at work — the one she thinks she hates. I don’t tell her he’ll be diagnosed with kidney failure the week after the engagement, because I know she doesn’t think she’ll be able to deal with something like that, but I do tell her she’ll soon be able to leave her hated office job and start her own business instead.

“That’s amazing,” she says, leaning forward excitedly. “I didn’t think I had it in me to start a business. What about the New York penthouse and the Malibu beach house, then? Which one do we get?”

“Malibu almost burns down at the start of 2025,” I tell her glumly. “And, in 2001, New York … um, you have a house in Scotland.”

I tell her exactly where it is in Scotland, and she bursts into tears. I told you she was a drama queen.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” I tell her, refilling her glass. “You’re actually really lucky to have a house at all. Loads of people can’t afford one. And there’s a really good school in the village.”

“Why would I care about schools?” she asks, through narrowed eyes.

I tell her she has a baby in 2017.

“Um, no?” she replies, downing her wine in one. “That can’t be right, because I absolutely KNOW that if I ever get pregnant I’ll have either an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage, and I’ll die.”

I fiddle nervously with my glass.

“Oh, my God,” she says, turning pale. “Which one is it?”

“Both,” I reply in a whisper, sliding the bottle across the table to her. “On the plus side, though, you end up with a gorgeous little boy. Like, out of all of the kids in the world, you somehow get the best one. Isn’t that amazing? And everyone says it’s really brave of you to try for a baby, given how terrified of childbirth you are.”

“But I don’t want to have to be ‘brave’,” she says tearfully. “I just want to be really successful and rich, and I want it to be easy.”

“Oh, it’s never going to be easy,” I tell her, sadly. “On the plus side, though, there’ll be a lot of years where it’s really quite fun. You know that ‘online journal’ you’ve just started? Well, get this: one day you’ll actually get paid to write that thing. Thousands of people will read it every month. You’ll get sent a lot of free stuff; clothes, makeup, shoes — you’ll even get free holidays.”

She looks at me suspiciously, but I can tell she’s already writing a ‘journal entry’ about this in her head.

“If we get all that free stuff, and we’re getting paid for the online journal — which I don’t really believe, by the way — then how come we look so … poor?” she asks, looking at my scruffy leggings and puffer coat.

“Um, so here’s the thing,” I reply, crossing my fingers under the table and wishing I’d closed this conversation on the ‘free holidays’ bit, because at least that would’ve given her something to look forward to. “We’re doing pretty well, but then, in 2020 there’s a pand—”

I trail off, remembering that my younger self is currently at the very height of her health anxiety, and will not cope well with what comes next.

“A what?”

She sips her wine anxiously.

“A … a panda,” I mutter, standing up quickly. “There’s a panda. At Edinburgh zoo. It’s really cute. So that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it? Anyway, is that the time? I have to go.”

“You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?” she points out, grabbing my arm to stop me. “What were you really going to say?”

“Okay, look,” I say, sitting back down. “I’m going to preface this by saying that no one you know dies in it, but … there’s a pandemic.”

I quickly tell her about the strange events of 2020, and how nothing’s really been the same since.

“And then, after that, Artificial Intelligence gets really good, really fast, and that has a big impact on your website — but it does’t really matter because, by that point, everyone has stopped reading ‘online journals’, anyway, because they’re all too busy watching videos of other people dancing on their phones,” I finish at last. “Should you be taking notes on this, do you think?”

“So … you’re basically saying there’s a plague, and then robots take over the world?” she says, looking very pale all of a sudden. “And everyone’s dancing while this happens? But this is the exact thing I’ve always worried about?”

“No it’s not,” I remind her. “Being stranded on a desert island filled with crabs is the exact thing you’ve always worried about, and, on the plus side, I can definitely assure you that doesn’t happen. Or not so far, at least. I wouldn’t rule anything out at this point, though.”

I raise my hand to get the waiter’s attention, realizing we’re going to need way more wine.

“Anyway,” I tell her brightly. “That’s when you start writing books. Just like you always wanted.”

“I write books? Real ones?”

She looks a bit happier.

“So, I’m a successful author, then? But that’s great!”

I look frantically around for the wine.

“Not really,” I admit. “You … well, you don’t make much money from it. You might even have to start taking on some freelance work soon, so you can pay the bills. And you don’t have much fun for a few years. It’s … well, it’s kind of stressful, to be honest.”

“So, what’s the point, then?” she asks, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “I just, what, work for years, only to end up just as poor as I am now?”

“Oh, you’ll be much poorer than you are … I mean, yeah, I can see your point,” I reply, trying to remember if this is our second bottle of wine or the third. “The thing to remember, though, is that this isn’t how you end up. Or, at least, I hope to God not.”

“It isn’t?”

“Well, no. I’d say this bit’s probably the Dark Night of the Soul,” I tell her, taking the bottle before she can drink any more. “We’ve still got the whole of the third act to go.”

“Wow,” she says, snatching the bottle back again. “We really do write books, don’t we? Do we always talk like this?”

“No. Yes. Sometimes. Anyway, my point is, we’re not done yet. So we might still get our happy ever after.”

I smile smugly.

“Unless we’re in a thriller,” she points out. “Then we might just die horribly. Or be sent to the workhouse.”

“That’s always a possibility,” I’m forced to admit. “But, the fact is, we don’t know. We’re going to have to wait for Future Us to come along and tell us what happens next. She should be here any minute, actually.”

We both turn to look at the door of the bar. It remains closed.

“I’m scared,” says Past Me. “And I’m not really sure I’m ready to meet Future Us. I mean, this has been bad enough as it is. What if—?”

“You know what? You’re right,” I say, standing up. “I don’t want to meet her either. Let’s make a run for it, before she arrives. At least that way we’ll be able to stay spoiler free for a bit longer. Well, I will, anyway.”

We head for the door, ready to go our separate ways.

“Don’t forget to book the Invisalign,” I tell her as we leave. “Do it as soon as you get home, in fact. And think about learning to dance, because that’s probably one of the most useful skills you could have in 2025.”

“Maybe try and get a facelift at some point?” she replies, wobbling slightly on her heels after all that wine. “I mean, there must be something we can do?”

And then we quickly go our separate ways before Future Amber can arrive; because the one things we’ve learned from this meeting is that, on balance, we’d rather not know what lies ahead, thanks all the same…