A Love Letter to the Last Version of Me.

Hi.

I didn't notice when you left…you didn't get a send-off. You were just there, and then gradually, quietly, you weren't, and I was someone slightly different looking in the mirror wondering when that happened.

I've been thinking about you lately. Not with longing exactly (but also with a little bit of longing?), but more like the way you think about a chapter of a book you read a while ago, you remember the feeling of it more than the details. Something fun and spontaneous, something tender, something you're glad you read even though parts of it were hard to get through.

You were so sure about certain things. I don't feel that way anymore, and I'm honestly not sure if I lost it or grew out of it or if it just got more complicated the way everything does when you look at it long enough. You would have had an answer for that. I kind of don't.

There are things I don't miss. The way you bent yourself into different shapes depending on who was in the room. The catastrophizing at 2am. The way you'd feel a feeling and immediately try to figure out if you were allowed to have it, like feelings come with terms and conditions you had to read carefully before proceeding. The apologizing for things that weren't yours to apologize for. The smallness you performed sometimes because it felt safer than taking up the space you actually needed.

But there are things I do miss. You felt things so fast. No lag time or translation needed, just the full, immediate weight of the world. You acted so quickly without thinking twice. You made friends so effortlessly. You moved to a new city and knew no one but just jumped in head first and created a big, bold, beautiful life. Everything was free, and effortless, and creative, and way less complicated.

You loved people in this really unguarded way. Before you'd talked yourself out of it or decided whether it was practical or figured out all the ways it could go wrong. You just did it. Fully, immediately, inconveniently. I don't know if that was brave or just something you hadn't learned not to do yet.

I think what I'm trying to say is that you weren't a rough draft. You were a whole person, dealing with things in real time, with a lot of missing context, and no idea how things would turn out (although truthfully, that is a lifelong reality). And you kept going anyway, which in retrospect seems like a lot to ask of someone who had no idea what they were doing.

I don't know what I'm supposed to say at the end of something like this.

I could tell you I'm okay now (although sometimes that changes moment to moment), but that implies you weren't, and that's not quite right. I could tell you I'm proud of you but that sounds like something on a cheesy poster. I could tell you I wish you'd been kinder to yourself, but you already know that.

So I'll just say: I remember you, and I think that's probably enough.