We all wish we had never grown up in Nostalgia

i remember being a kid, remember how it was to have dreams and hopes. i remember how it was to let myself belief them, to play out my fantasies in my mind and really believing i could be anything i wanted to be. the innocence of childhood. i was a fiery kid, always jumping around, mischievous, bold and talkative in a way my grown self would cringe even thinking about. I visited all the houses in the neighborhood, spent my time talking to people of all age groups, went on make belief adventures with my friends. I remember once screaming at my uncle in rage coz i thought he was being rude to my mom. i was just out of kindergarden i think. I was a fighter. the kind of kid who had walked into my neighbours house in full rage and asked an explanation as to why their honeybees kept biting my brother and why they cant keep the comb away from my houses wall and grow them somewhere else. I do not have half the courage now. I have grown well into a perfectly submissive dormat, failing to fight back whenever its most needed. But i was also still fiercely loyal, so fucking with my loved ones was the only time who would actually see me grow a spine. We dream of becoming many things while we are young … then we grow up and we forget. I had different dreams in different phases of my life, consistency wasnt something i had even as a kid.
Like how i dreamed of becoming a environmentalist, coz i felt bad for the dying earth, kept obsessively thinking about accumulating plastic like an person with OCD will think about the grime in his house. then i wanted to be a social rights activist, then a short phase as a designer, then an artist , then a writer.. then as i entered into my teens my aspirations increasingly felt the need to be also realistic as well as awesome, i dreamed of becoming a psychologist, then an english professor… and atlast i stumbled upon a stupid movie about doctors working in war zones and fell in love with their power to make a difference.
And this was just before we are done with school and my parents rejoiced, it was my dads long cherished dream to make me a doctor, something all indian parents obsess over. i reverted back to my wanting to a psychologist which scared my parents coz psychologists dont get paid as docs n my father cant say my daughter is a doctor. Anyway my parents convinced me i coukd always study psychiatry after i have done with medicine and i thought okay thats a good enough deal, i can study the mind and also make my parents happy. So i dropped a year after school trying to crack entrance. the thing about our hugely populated country is dat there was millions of intelligent people but not even near enough colleges or jobs for them, so getting into somewhere was always tough. After an year of toiling away, I hardly scraped through, didnt manage to get into the top govt colleges and got myself admitted in a private college and started my life as a medico without really knowing what i am getting myself into. i came to my college excited and hopeful, unknowingly on my way to grumpy and depressed adulthood from my always toothy smiled goofy teenage self. Still the process wasnt all that bad, going away from home to college to a different and more progressive city was the best thing that happened to me in my life so far. But i sometimes miss my older self who always smiled, was kind and was full of hope that she could change the world and make a difference and wanted help the suffering, fall in love and lead a meaningful life.