From Year 8 onwards, I developed the seemingly healthy habit of distancing myself from people who prioritised things other than work. As a result of being parented by hustle culture, I commoditised the people around me. I binge-watched corny YouTube videos which described friendships as a determining factor of how much material success I could achieve. They were, in fact, just another way for me to become “the best version of myself”. In my mind, friendships were just a means for something greater - a looking glass for my future.

During early years, friendships should generally be characterised by a genuine enjoyment of being around each other, free from ulterior motives. This is a culture where your career takes priority over other parts of the human experience like relationships. I found myself engaging with and supporting the myths of hustle culture from a young age. “It became easy to forget that I was a child” My adolescence was not characterised by “life and its enjoyments” but rather by concerns about the job I would have, how hard I could work, the house I would own – if I could even own one – and how much money I would have.

It is because this rigid distinction between childhood and adulthood has never existed for me. Not because my younger years were terrible, nor because my small experience of adulthood has been great. But whilst I could successfully observe what childhood was meant to be, I never necessarily experienced it.

One’s early years should be filled with imaginative play, nonchalance, and an engagement with the present rather than the future. Literature and films are full of romantic depictions of childhood. I am still aware of what an ideal childhood should look like. And, though they said this in softer terms, life and its enjoyments would plateau once I was old enough to work a 9-5 and pay my taxes. Omniscient aunties and uncles would say that life, while I was young, was the best that it would get. Childhood is meant to be your glory days, I was told.

Relive my childhood