"It's disturbing at my age to look at a young woman's destructive behaviour and hear the echoes of it, of one's own destructiveness in youth"

In this quote, author Helen Garner reviews the upsetting feeling of seeing a girl take part in damaging habits and recognizing resemblances to her own previous actions. As she has actually grown older, she has gained point of view and can now see the effects of her own destructive habits in her youth. This realization is disturbing because it acts as a pointer of the mistakes and damage she caused in the past. It also highlights the cyclical nature of damaging behavior, as she sees echoes of her own actions in the young woman's behavior. This quote speaks with the universal experience of reflecting on one's previous and recognizing the impact of our actions on ourselves and others.