The Face After Us #4

Nobody tells you that one of the strangest parts of being alive is spending your whole life meeting versions of yourself that never stay. That’s what this piece feels like to me. Not death. Not fear. Just identity standing in front of a mirror and realizing it has been changing the entire time. Because if you think about it, every version of you once felt permanent. The child you were. The person you became after your first heartbreak. The version of you that trusted too easily. The one that stopped trusting at all. The one that loved harder than they should have. The one that learned to hide it. Every one of them felt like you. Every one of them looked through your eyes and believed they were the final person you would become. And then life kept moving. Quietly. Without asking permission. That’s the part that hits me. Because nobody notices themselves disappearing. It happens slowly. You outgrow a dream. You stop calling someone. You laugh differently. You stop believing something you once would have defended with your whole heart. And one day you realize a person you used to be exists only in memory now. Gone. Not because they died. Because you kept living. That skull doesn’t feel like death to me. It feels like everything we leave behind while becoming someone else. And the mirror doesn’t feel like reflection. It feels like a question. Because maybe we spend our whole lives trying to discover ourselves... while versions of us are quietly ending every day so new ones can begin. Maybe that’s why nostalgia hurts so much. Not because we miss places. Not because we miss time. Because sometimes we miss people we used to be. People we can never go back and meet again. And maybe the saddest thing is this: Some versions of us disappeared before anyone ever loved them. Before anyone understood them. Before anyone even noticed they were here. So be honest if every version of you was standing in one room together right now... which one would look at the person you became and ask: “What happened to us?”