Maybe I Wasn't Losing Myself After All

There is a strange kind of grief that comes with realizing you don't recognize yourself anymore.

Not because something terrible happened. Not because there was some dramatic before and after. Sometimes you just wake up one day and realize the things that used to excite you don't anymore. Your routines have changed. Your priorities have shifted. The places that once felt like home feel a little different.

Even your dreams don't fit quite the way they used to.

And if you're anything like me, your first instinct is to panic.

Where did I go?

So you start searching.

You scroll through old pictures trying to find her. You listen to the songs she loved. You revisit old places, old friendships, old routines, old versions of happiness. You think about the girl who seemed so sure of herself and wonder when exactly you stopped being her.

You start desperately trying to recreate a feeling you can't quite name.

Maybe if I go back there. Maybe if I do this again. Maybe if I can just get back to her.

Because somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that changing meant I had lost something.

And lately I've been realizing:

Maybe I wasn't losing myself at all.

Maybe I was outgrowing her.

I kept treating growth like grief.

For a while, I've felt like I'm chasing something.

Not necessarily a person or a place or even a specific time in my life.

A feeling.

The feeling of being younger and somehow lighter. Of having fewer things to think about. Of believing there was endless time between where I was and where I was supposed to end up.

I've been trying so hard to get back to a version of myself who existed before so much changed.

And that's the cruel irony of your twenties.

You spend so much of them trying to "find yourself," but nobody tells you that finding yourself sometimes requires losing every version of yourself you thought you were supposed to be.

I've spent so much time asking:

How do I get back to who I was?

When maybe the better question has always been:

Who am I becoming?

One asks you to turn around.

The other asks you to keep walking.

Nobody tells you about the grace period.

I think your early twenties come with this invisible grace period.

You're technically an adult, but everyone still kind of expects you to have no idea what you're doing.

You're allowed to change jobs, move somewhere new, date the wrong person, spend too much money on something stupid, call your parents when you don't understand your insurance, and have absolutely no clue what a 401(k) actually does.

You're an adult...

but you're new here.

Then somewhere around your mid-twenties, the grace period quietly expires.

Nobody sends you a letter. There isn't a ceremony.

You just start noticing that the questions change.

It stops being:

"What do you want to do?"

and becomes:

"What are you doing?"

Suddenly people your age are getting married. Buying houses. Having babies. Getting promoted. Starting businesses. Posting ultrasound pictures and closing-day pictures and wedding pictures in kitchens they actually own.

And you look around and think:

Wait. Was I supposed to be doing that too?

For most of our lives, everyone around us was moving toward roughly the same milestone at roughly the same time.

School. Graduation. College. Another graduation.

And then suddenly there is no next grade.

No syllabus.

No guidance counselor handing you a checklist saying, Here are the next four things you're supposed to do.

Everyone just starts choosing.

And that freedom is beautiful.

But it can also be terrifying.

The craziest part? I don't even want what I'm comparing myself to.

I'll look at people my age doing things I once assumed I would be doing by now and feel behind.

Then I stop and ask myself:

Do I actually want that right now?

And so often, the answer is...

No.

Not yet.

Maybe someday.

But not today.

I'm feeling behind in a race I don't even want to be running.

And I realized that so much of the life I think I "should" have by now was designed by a much younger version of me.

At fifteen, 26 sounded incredibly grown.

She probably pictured a woman who had everything figured out. The career. The relationship. The house. The plans. Marriage somewhere on the horizon. Maybe babies not too far behind.

She had an entire life planned for someone she hadn't even met yet.

Me.

And I love her for dreaming that big.

But why am I letting a fifteen-year-old decide whether my life is on track?

She didn't know who I would become.

She didn't know the people I would meet, what would break my heart, what would make me feel alive, which dreams I would outgrow, or which ones I hadn't even dreamed yet.

She was building my future using the only information she had at the time.

And I've been treating her imagination like a contract.

Maybe I'm not behind.

Maybe the destination changed.

There are things I wanted ten years ago that I don't want anymore. There are things I thought would make me happy that I've experienced and realized weren't meant for me. There are dreams I've quietly put down and new ones I haven't figured out how to say out loud yet.

That's not failure.

That's information.

That's living.

She wasn't wrong for wanting those things.

She was right for who she was then.

And I can love her without becoming her again.

Change has always terrified me.

There is comfort in what is familiar, even when what is familiar isn't necessarily what is best for us.

I've learned that sometimes I would rather hold onto something I know than reach for something better that I can't see yet.

Because at least I know how the old thing ends.

Newness asks for trust.

It asks you to release people, places, routines, expectations, and identities before you have replacements for them.

And I think that's the hardest part of growth:

there is often a space between who you were and who you're becoming.

A hallway.

You've closed one door, but the next one hasn't opened yet.

And there is nothing to decorate in the hallway. Nothing to settle into.

You just have to stand there for a while.

That's where I've been.

And instead of recognizing it as transition, I labeled it loss.

I thought not recognizing myself meant I needed to go find the old me.

But maybe the reason I couldn't find her is because she isn't missing.

She finished her part.

Maybe sometimes you have to lose yourself.

Not in the scary way we usually mean it.

Maybe sometimes you have to lose yourself because you're carrying an identity that no longer has enough room for your life.

Maybe you have to lose the version of yourself who needed everyone's approval.

The version who thought there was one correct timeline.

The version who thought adulthood meant having answers.

The version who was so committed to the plan that she forgot to ask whether she still wanted it.

Maybe "losing yourself" is sometimes just life clearing out space.

Because you cannot receive everything that's coming while desperately clutching everything that's leaving.

You can't keep one foot in yesterday and expect yourself to confidently walk into tomorrow.

Maybe that's why this season has felt so uncomfortable.

I've been trying to make room for a new life without moving any of the old furniture.

I don't want to chase myself anymore.

I don't want to spend my twenties mourning previous versions of me.

I don't want to turn every old photograph into evidence that I used to be happier.

I don't want nostalgia to convince me that the best parts already happened.

And I don't want to keep asking why I don't feel like the girl I was at 19, or 21, or 23.

Of course I don't.

She hadn't lived what I've lived yet.

She hadn't loved who I've loved.

She hadn't lost what I've lost.

She hadn't learned what I've learned.

I'm not supposed to be her anymore.

And maybe there's something incredibly beautiful about that.

Because if I am different now, that means life reached me.

It changed me.

It taught me something.

I think your twenties are less about finding yourself and more about giving yourself permission to keep becoming.

Maybe we're allowed to want something different.

We're allowed to take longer.

We're allowed to arrive somewhere we never planned to go.

We're allowed to be in our mid-twenties and still have questions.

We're allowed to be terrified of change and walk toward it anyway.

We're allowed to become people our younger selves wouldn't recognize.

Maybe especially then.

Because I don't think fifteen-year-old me would look at my life and be disappointed that it didn't happen exactly the way she planned.

I think she'd be fascinated.

She'd want to know about the places I've gone and the people I've loved. She'd want to know which dreams came true and which ones changed. She'd probably be shocked by some of my decisions.

But I think she'd be proud that we made it here.

Not because everything went according to plan.

But because it didn't.

And we kept going.

So maybe I haven't lost myself.

Maybe I've just reached the end of one version.

Maybe all this discomfort isn't life taking something away from me.

Maybe it's making room.

And instead of desperately chasing who I was, I'm trying to turn around and finally look toward who I'm becoming.

I don't know exactly who she is yet.

I don't know what her life looks like.

I don't know what dreams she'll decide are worth keeping.

And for once, I'm trying not to demand those answers from her.

I'm just excited to meet her.

Because maybe the life ahead of me doesn't need to look anything like the life I planned at fifteen.

Maybe it gets to be better simply because I finally chose it for myself.