You can miss a person who is still alive. I know that. But nobody tells you that the person can be you.
There’s a version of me from a few years ago that I think about the way you think about someone who moved away. Not with regret exactly. Not with the wish that things were still like that. More like the quiet ache of knowing that person doesn’t exist anymore and no amount of calling will reach her.
She was angrier. That’s the one I miss most. The version of me who hadn’t yet learned to sit with discomfort, who just burned through it. She’d hear something unfair and her whole body would go off like a match. No editing. No calculating the cost. Just fire. People were scared of her sometimes and she didn’t care because being scared of someone is at least a form of taking them seriously.
I’m calmer now. I’m better at staying in the room. I can hold two contradictory feelings at once and not explode. This is supposed to be growth. It is growth. But growth has a body count and nobody warns you about the bodies.
The bodies are the selves you leave behind.
You grieve them the way you grieve anyone. In flashes. You’ll be in a conversation, holding your tongue because you’ve learned that holding your tongue is sometimes the kind thing, and you’ll feel her back there somewhere, the one who would have said the sharp true thing, and you’ll miss her. Not enough to bring her back. Just enough to feel the absence.
The part that makes it hard to talk about is that you’re not supposed to miss who you were. The story we tell about personal growth is a clean upgrade. Version one was broken. Version two is better. You don’t miss the broken version. That would be ungrateful.
I am glad. I’m also lonely for someone who doesn’t exist anymore.
The thing about the old version is she was easier to find. You always knew where you stood with her because she told you, loudly, immediately, whether you asked or not. There’s a freedom in that kind of certainty that you can’t get back once you’ve learned to second-guess.
I think what I’m really missing is the certainty. Not the anger itself but the way the anger felt like a compass. It pointed and she went. Now the compass spins and I sit with the spinning and I call that wisdom and sometimes it is and sometimes it’s just paralysis dressed up in nicer clothes.
People who haven’t changed yet think changing is the hard part. It’s not. The hard part is after. When you’re standing in the new shape and you catch a glimpse of the old shape in a memory or a photo or a song and you feel something that doesn’t fit the narrative. You feel fond. You feel tender toward someone you’re supposed to have outgrown.
You can hold that. You’re allowed to miss her and still know she had to go. Grief and relief can share a room. They don’t cancel each other out.
I think about her sometimes when I’m being careful. When I’m choosing the kind response over the honest one because I’ve learned that kindness is sometimes more important than truth. Sometimes that’s real. Sometimes it’s just a prettier way of being afraid. In those moments I feel her. Not pulling me back. Just standing somewhere behind me, watching, the way you watch someone you love walk into a room you can’t follow them into.
She’s gone. I’m here. I’m glad I’m here. I also keep a light on for her.
That’s not a contradiction. That’s just what it costs to become someone. You lose the person you were and you don’t get a funeral. You just wake up one day different and carry the old one around like a name you don’t use anymore but never forget.