I'm Staying Up Until 3AM Reading Fanfic Again

does growing up mean outgrowing?

I told myself I'd go to bed at midnight. Reasonable. Mature. Adult. Midnight means I can still get a full night’s rest, get up early, and make tea like a functioning person who has their life together. But here I am, 3:07 AM, reading fanfiction like I'm sixteen and the stakes of a love confession between two fictional characters are the most important thing in the universe.

And man, it's ridiculous. I’m not in high school anymore. I pay bills. I answer emails. I have a LinkedIn.

And yet, here I am again. Phone in hand, blanket pulled up to my chin, eyes dry from staring at a screen too long.

I used to think growing up meant outgrowing. I really believed there would come a point where I’d shed the person I was like snakeskin. Where I’d stop craving sugar at midnight, stop organizing my life around imaginary scenarios, and stop spending hours making playlists that no one but me would ever hear. That I’d somehow become someone else entirely. Sleek. Simplified. Efficient.

But here’s what they don’t tell you: the old selves don’t disappear. They linger. They haunt you like ghosts.

No, not the kind that throw books off your shelf or slam doors, but the quiet kind; the ones that sit with you when the house is still, watching you from the corners of your reflection. They show up when you least expect them: in the pause before you hit "send," in the sudden urge to trim your hair on a random Tuesday, in the way your heart still stammers a little when someone plays the first few notes of a song you swore had saved your life once.

They don’t knock, but they don’t need to. They live here too.

You’ll find them when you open a drawer and see a bracelet you haven't worn in years, or when you walk past someone wearing your old favorite perfume. Sometimes they come rushing in full force—like when you stumble on a photo you forgot you took, or when you find an old journal and read words that feel like a message from a version of yourself you didn’t realize you missed.

And sometimes, they sit quietly at the edge of your mind, waiting to be noticed. Not haunting, exactly. It's more like... reminding. Whispering. Asking if you remember what it felt like to be thirteen and unstoppable. Or seventeen and completely lost. Or nineteen and so sure you’d figure it all out by twenty-one.

You carry them all, even the ones you thought you’d outgrown. The anxious kid. The hopeless romantic. The quiet one who never spoke up. They don’t vanish, they move. They settle into the layers of who you are now—older, maybe wiser, maybe just better at hiding the mess.

And every once in a while, they come forward. You stay up too late. You laugh like you used to. You cry harder than you expect. You want something with the same reckless urgency you thought you’d left behind.

And for a moment, it’s like nothing has changed.
Or maybe everything has, and you're just finally learning how to carry it all.

So maybe I’ll stay up too late again tonight. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow, too. Maybe I’ll keep reaching for these pieces of my younger self—not because I’m stuck, but because I remember. Because part of me is still sixteen, still searching and wondering. And maybe that’s not a failure to grow up. Maybe it’s the most grown-up thing I can do: to carry her with me. Not as a burden, but as proof. That I was once someone who felt things deeply. Who stayed up late for no good reason. Who believed in the magic of stories, of connection, of moments that made the world feel a little less heavy.

I’ve been many versions of myself, and I suspect I’ll be many more. But this one—sleepy-eyed, sentimental, a little foolish—is one I’m glad I get to keep.