After the birth of my first daughter, I wanted to protect her at any cost. As I worried about what could happen to her, I started to think about the person she would be as a teenager. Would she be as limitless as I was as a young adult, pushing at the boundaries of her life?

During this time, I rediscovered an old movie I made with my best friend when we were 20. It immediately brought me back to the early 2000s and the wild — and at times destructive — fun of my youth. I felt a flood of nostalgia for that time: the clothes we wore, the bravado in our voices, the friendship we had.

But I look back at that time with mixed feelings. I see a boy who’s insecure, who feels unseen and unheard and takes a lot of risks to escape those feelings. But I also see a boy excited about the future who wants to change his life and who’s dreaming big.

Though I wish I could change the past, I just have to live with it. Today I can’t understand the risks we took back then. But when you’re young, you don’t have time to think of death.

– Text and Film by Christer Wahlberg

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