Her pinky locks with her sister’s as the clock strikes twelve on October 25th, 2016. The minute she turned ten, she promised her sister about the girl she’d become in the future. 

“I won’t be obsessed with my phone, I’ll spend almost all my time outside, and I will never swear—not even when I’m 21.” 

But as a 15-year-old, she has continuously broken that promise. 

The minute she downloaded the app Muscial.ly on her brand new iPhone 7 that same day, her eyes never broke away from the screen. She lip-synced for hours on end, eyes straining from the screen, counting the likes— waiting to become famous.

Cooped up in her bedroom, twisting her phone and transitioning from clip to clip, the old little girl who used to climb trees and play dolls disappeared into a social media crazed tween. 

Nature called to her, waiting for that golden hair to flow in the wind on a hot summer’s day. But that wind became a fan plugged into her four-walled room, and that golden hair darkened into a mocha.

The blue sky chalked into her popcorn ceilings; no more cloud watching unless they appeared in an aesthetically pleasing Pinterest picture. Her entire life and sanity were on the device. 

Not only did that little promise shatter over a Musical.ly obsession, but when quarantine occurred, her mouth ran dry with unspeakable words.

That innocence embodying her vanished as the words slipped her tongue, even accidentally. Who knows where these terms sprouted from throughout her time alone, but if little nine-year-old Amelia could hear the word choice pouring from her mouth now, her mind would boggle.

This is not who she was supposed to become. She used to be a smart, outgoing, innocent gymnast who spent almost all her time laying on the grass. Where has that young girl gone?

Now she is a struggling high school student—introverted, unathletic, and spends almost all her time laying in bed. 

The feeling of failing her younger self haunts her aura every time she curses, scrolls through her phone, or sits, staring out into the universe, through a car window. She was not who she promised her sister, and herself, she’d be. If only little her could see the nose piercing and glasses, would she even recognize herself? 

Though single-digit Amelia may not like who she’ll become in the time-ahead, teenage Amelia feels more confident than she ever has. She loves the power she’s given herself and the freedoms she now has. No matter how disappointed she feels to have let down her old goals of being the best human possible, her warm rosy cheeks show a flood of happiness she may have never achieved in elementary school. 

She’ll never forget the day hers and her sister’s pinkies intertwined, the day all her standards reached a new acme, the day she promised something unmanageable that could create a cold, darkening future for her life. 

Yet the day it broke, her future was freed.