219. Everything changes beyond absolute recognition
There are days when I think about how I used to be. Not just last year or the year before, but the version of me who walked into rooms differently, who expected different things maybe years before, who wrote in journals as if every entry might someday be needed for evidence. I think the evidence I'm tracking is just growth? I guess I didn't know it at the time, but I have to look back and see how much I've grown as a person based on my writing. I thought about different things when I was much younger.
Back then, I had ideas about permanence. I believed that people who meant something would always mean something, that places I loved would always welcome me back, that if I held tight enough, things wouldn’t slip through my hands. But everything changes beyond absolute recognition. Sometimes gently or gradually, and sometimes, not always with warning. Sometimes it happens in such a complete and quiet way that you don’t even notice until much later - until you're halfway through saying something and realize you don't believe the words you say anymore. Until someone brings up a memory and you feel like they’re describing someone else's life. That's not me anymore- and I'd think and say that to myself. I think it's good to outgrow myself. We are allowed to, after all.
Change doesn’t always ask permission. It arrives like a tide you didn’t know was rising. You think you’re still standing where you’ve always been, but when you look around, the shoreline is gone, landmarks are different, and nothing you used to use to orient yourself makes sense anymore. You start to question your own memory - was that always there? Did I used to feel that way?
Change is not just about loss. It’s not always tragic. Sometimes the change is good - sometimes it saves you. You outgrow people who kept you small. You lose habits that drained you. You move away from ideas that were quietly hurting you. Besides, you can't really heal in the place that hurt you, right? But even when it’s good, it’s still disorienting. Because there’s no clear line where the “before” ends and the “after” begins. You just wake up one day and notice you don’t dream about the same things anymore. The things you used to obsess over have softened, faded, or become entirely irrelevant. And that can feel like relief. Or it can feel like grief. Often, it’s both. I often feel both.
I used to think change looked like a choice. Like a big decision, or a dramatic turning point. Like you're standing at the fork of a road and you're met with the choice between two paths More often than not, it’s a slow undoing. A quiet unraveling of something that no longer fits, followed by the even quieter work of stitching something else in its place. And sometimes it doesn’t look like progress. Sometimes it looks like forgetting who you were or needing to lie down more often. I am often more tired than ever before.
Still - somehow - we just gotta keep going. You learn to live inside the version of your life that now exists. You learn new names, you find new rhythms, and little by little, you begin to build your life around the absence. It’s not about replacing what’s gone. It’s more like setting down a glass of water on a different windowsill. It still catches the light. It’s still you. Just elsewhere.
Everything changes beyond absolute recognition. And then it changes again. You don’t need to rush to understand it. You don’t need to frame it or name it or write a perfect ending to the part that’s gone. Sometimes the best you can do is say - I’m still here. I’m different now. And that’s totally okay with me.
~ don't go changing to try to please me,
<3 K