Wicked and the Teenage Self

"Hands touch, eyes meet"

He wakes up abruptly, his hands gasping for air. It is days after his high school prom and he vaguely remembers an image of him and his fellow twelve/thirteen year old friends in a car.

Something is missing. Something that was just there. Minutes, seconds, a different reality ago.

"Sudden silence, sudden heat"

He doesn't remember what was happening or what they were talking about. All he notices is the echoing silence. What once was, is no longer there. His body is flushed, his senses are wired. The after effects of the nap lingers.

"Hearts meet in a giddy world"

It was love or what felt like it anyway. A different reality between him and his arch nemesis V*, in an empty car ride to prom. Just both of them on this journey, holding hands. A twelve year old's true yearning for affection and intimacy imagined in a dream state. A filter over the memory of what that night actually was.

"He could be that boy but I am not that girl"

He starts crying, the loss far too painful. It scares him because he doesn't yet know what it means or what his heart is asking for. Can he love a boy?

"Don't dream too far"
"Don't lose sight of who you are"
"Don't remember that rush of joy"
"He could be that boy but I am not that girl"

He is 15 years old now and it's his first year in a new school. He doesn't realise it yet and will not for many years to come but he moved schools to follow his crush. This feeling of loathing and competition he is feeling is actually an adolescent crush which hasn't been named. The dream he woke up from at twelve is now forgotten and buried.

This school requires him to wear shorts. He feels like a child and is out of his depths. His friends have not moved with him, the friends he used to have feel foreign to him and he will now have to make new friends in a new space. There was even an exam (read: competition) to get into the school. Children made to compete to prove their worth.

Over the years, terms like "Inner Child" and "Younger Self" have entered the public space and can be quite often heard in day to day conversations. What was once purely therapy speak or language specific to psychology spaces is now common vocabulary. But when we talk about things like this, what do we actually mean? What does it actually mean to do Inner Child or Younger Self work? And what actually happens when we do it? As someone who stumbled upon some of these ideas by study, trial and error, instinct and accident, I wanted to write more about my experiences trying them out for many years now.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I deliberately took my fifteen year old teenage self to watch Wicked. It was my second time watching but this time around, I felt it was necessary that I bring this version of me purposefully and intently along with me. Wicked meant a lot to me at that age when we were first discovering ourselves, theatre and musicals.

You see, we go through our lives with all versions of us existing in our body. All past memories, triggers, traumas and selves existing in the conscious and subsconcious headspace. Depending on what is happening in our lives, the different selves or parts of us get activated or shut down. Sometimes consciously but a lot of the times unconsciously. Ever found yourself getting angry with someone but not actually knowing why? Or a sudden emotion overtakes you and before you know it, you have made a rash choice or said something you didn't actually logically mean? A moment when the math in your head actually doesn't quite add up.

Chances are a past self, memory, trigger or trauma response is at play. A lot of it tends to happen when we are younger and first developing these responses growing up. It is a how a lot of our world view is shaped and formed. Enter the Inner Child or Younger Self and the version of us that first came to that conclusion or first discovered that emotion.

The week I had the idea to take my teenage self to watch Wicked had been awful and our thoughts were particularly rough and foggy. His experiences and memories of being a teenager kept coming up. To take him to watch the movie meant consciously bringing him to my mental awareness and holding him at the surface. To think about him, to feel what it was like to be in that body and headspace again. To almost feel like I was taking a friend/loved one/younger brother with me to the movies. I remember crying all the way to the cinema and through most of the movie.

As Elphaba dreamt of meeting the Wizard, I felt his dreams of meeting the one. His dreams of leaving the country and finally being allowed to be gay. His dreams of being in a relationship with a man and not have to hide it or be scared of being found out. His dreams that all he had to do was to study hard, put in the work, get good grades and leave the country. He could finally no longer be the odd one out, the one who stood out due to his greenness (read:queerness)

Wicked to me growing up was not just any musical. Wicked stood for the dream of doing theatre, of being on Broadway, for living in New York City. For a chance to be queer and open and live the American Dream. To my teenage self, if we left Malaysia, we could do theatre, we could be on stage and we could live the artistic queer life.

Fifteen is a tough age to be, not yet an adult, no longer a child and in the throes of being a teen. Its unfortunately worse when you are queer and Malaysian and Indian. The intersections of these identities, a choker hold on one's state of mind and feelings and emotions.

That week was rough for us for a variety of reasons but a huge part was the return of our high school bully (again). A person who made life as a teenager very difficult but had now returned in a different form as an adult. The teenage self and the adult self both wanting different things from one person. One to run away, another to run towards. It is hard to explain when one body is holding more than one age at a time. And yet that is the human experience.

Watching Wicked meant we didn't go and meet this person. It mean't sitting down and feeling all our hopes, disappointments, feelings and dreams all over again. It mean't crying at every song and every moment that meant something. It mean't feeling that giddy joy of being a theatre kid. It mean't feeling sad and hurt and happy and joyful all over the course of a movie. It mean't crying and crying and crying. Tears that perhaps did not need to make sense but needed to be felt.

What would happen if more of us consciously let our younger selves come to the surface? To engage in conversation and feeling with those parts of ourselves that we have been ignoring or not paying attention? What would happen if we held space for them and let them feel everything within our adult bodies versus the numbing out we perhaps did in our younger unknowing bodies?

Sitting in the cinema as the credits roll up and the tears continue to pour, I hold all versions of me and breathe. Perhaps in the darkest of nights, all it means to find my way through is needing some light. Even if that light is crying and watching Wicked to hold space for both my adult and teenage versions of me.

"Hands touch, eyes meet"
"Sudden silence, sudden heat"
"Hearts meet in a giddy world"
"He could be that boy but I am not that girl"

And thats okay.