I was five years old when “Inside Out” came out on June 19, 2015. This was one of the movies I grew up with.

I don’t remember watching it the first time when I was five. I didn’t go to the movies when it came out. My family had a tradition of waiting until it came out on Netflix or Hulu or Disney+. I do remember watching it the second, third, fourth time when I was eight. I was truly mesmerized by it. I was mesmerized with how the girl, Riley, had all these emotions in her head that just had to press a button for the emotion to come out.

It showed me how easily you could turn from joy to anger and how maybe being too angry or too sad could affect the people around you because of how you react to it. The first time I saw joy hold one of those core memories, I remember thinking about my memories. I thought, “Is the reason I keep forgetting my memories because my emotions keep dropping them? What are my core memories?” After I watched Inside Out I kept thinking about what type of islands I would have outside my control center. Would I have a Family Island? Friendship Island just like Riley? Would I have a Sports Island? A Loyalty Island?

One question I thought about after watching Inside Out is, “Why would someone make this?” Pete Doctor, the director of Inside Out, explained his thoughts of why they made it in his televised interview with his Screen Slam.

“I think that’s the reason we go to movies. We want to recognize ourself in some way, even though you know Pixar movies…are about characters or cars or monsters or bugs or whatever. But hopefully there’s something about those guys’ experience that we see reflective of our own life. That was certainly the case in this film.“

Now that I’m older, I understand why Riley acted the way she did and why those core emotions were Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, and Fear. When you’re a kid, you’re always happy or you always try to be. But when you get older you stop trying to always be happy, you start becoming sad, angry, and fearful of everyday life. Pete Doctor also talks about these emotions in his televised interview with his Screen Slam.

“Well I always feel like Joy is something we all want. Right… you go to the bookstore and there’s tons of self-help books finding your inner joy and finding happiness and all this. And yet life is full of difficulty, there is unexpected disappointment and loss. That is ultimately why all these emotions that we think as negative, they are actually helpful. They have a real purpose and a reason for existing.”

I truly thought everything clicked like someone finally gave me a reason why I sometimes burst with joy,sadness,fear,disgust, or just pure anger. When I was a kid after watching the movie I thought I really did have all these emotions in my head and whenever they came out it was just because they pressed my button in the control center. Now, I know that’s crazy but I still love Inside Out. It will always be a part of my childhood.

It’s close to 10 years later now. I heard on a random day that they were making a new Inside Out. Called “Inside Out 2.” It’s all about Riley having grown up and developing new emotions. I was so excited when I heard about it. When I watched it and saw all these new emotions – Anxious, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment. I just thought, “Wow, they really hit all these new emotions on the nail.” It was so funny to me on how everything was normal in the beginning with all of Riley’s core emotions but then chaos broke in. Riley’s puberty button alarmed and the demolition team came and reworked the control buttons for all her new emotions and I just thought, “Yeah, I hope that was going on in my head, that was kinda funny.”

Then I started to think about why they put those specific emotions in. They showed us how when you grow up you become all these emotions. You become Ennui and you start feeling tired and bored of things you once loved. You start being Envy and being envious of what people have and why you don’t. You start being Anxiety and worrying, “Am I good enough?” if it’s about sports, school or yourself. And my personal favorite is when you grow up, you definitely start being Embarrassment. Whether it’s over what you believe in, what you said, what you wished you said, anything.

I also saw how in Inside Out, Joy and Sadness really hated each other, but they figured out you can’t have Sadness without Joy and vice versa. In Inside Out 2, it was the same thing but with Joy and Anxiety .

When Anxiety kicked Joy and the core emotions out, you could see the difference in Riley. She was really only controlled by Anxiety and Envy being her sidekick and I thought, “that really is how I feel sometimes, like I’m only controlled by Anxiety, and Joy left me.” Yet, even with me loving all these emotions, I wondered why they didn’t add more positive emotions like love. Kelsey Mann, Inside Out 2 Director, explained why in his televised Collider interview.

“It’s probably more conflicting because I see them as positive. Now we’ve done a lot of research and like I say even anxiety. She has the potential to do harm but really she’s trying to help and all of them are there to like love and take care of us. I see them as all positive emotions. It’s just learning how to manage them properly and how to lean into the help that they’re trying to give us.”

I also loved how in Inside Out 2 it really showed how you sometimes grow away from your friends. I can really resonate with Riley and all the feelings she had and all the choices she made that were fueled with Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and a bit of Ennui. I feel like the anxiety to be the best is something we all struggle with and have to deal with on a daily basis. Another thing I absolutely adored in the movie was Riley’s Sense of Self. I thought it was so clever to add it because the more you grow and get older the more you start identifying your true sense of self. Kelsey Mann and Mark Nielsen, the director and Producer of Inside Out 2, explained why they added Riley’s Sense of Self in his televised interview with Screen Rant Plus.

“We got really excited about Riley becoming a teenager. You’re starting to develop your own like identity at that age and your own beliefs. We were like ahhh beliefs… the belief system. I want to go down the belief system! What does that look like? And we got really excited for that. So that I really hope people latch onto because it’s one of my favorite locations.”

When I was finishing Inside Out 2, I saw how the vision really did come to life. It felt incredible that my childhood was represented by Inside Out and now Inside Out 2 defined my teenage years. I hope there will be an Inside Out 3 so my college and adult years can be represented by Riley and her new emotions. Maybe they could add Love, Sympathy, Trust, Stress, Greed, Hate, Spite, maybe even bring nostalgia since they mentioned her in “Inside Out 2.” If there is a third one I wouldn’t even care!