Before Everything Got Complicated

There are days when you don’t miss a person, a place, or a moment.

You miss yourself.

Not in a dramatic, identity-crisis way.

Just quietly. Subtly. Like noticing an old song doesn’t feel the same anymore, or realizing you don’t laugh the way you used to.

You miss the version of you that didn’t think so much before speaking.

The one who didn’t measure every word, every reaction, every silence.

The one who existed without constantly observing themselves existing.

It’s strange, grieving someone who still technically lives inside you.

Because that version of you didn’t disappear overnight.

They dissolved slowly.

In small moments.

In things you didn’t even notice were changing you.

A friendship that shifted.

A sentence that stayed longer than it should have.

A day when you realized things aren’t as simple as they used to be.

And suddenly, you’re here.

More aware. More careful. More… complicated.

People call it growth.

But no one really talks about what growth takes away.

No one talks about how self-awareness can feel like a spotlight you can’t turn off.

How innocence isn’t just about being naive, but about feeling light.

Unburdened by overthinking, by expectations, by the need to understand everything.

You didn’t know you were living in a soft version of life until it hardened.

And now, sometimes, you catch glimpses of that past self.

In old photos.

In the way you used to write.

In memories that feel warmer than they probably were.

And there’s this quiet ache.

Not because you want to go back exactly,

but because you miss how it felt to be that person.

It’s a different kind of nostalgia.

Not for a time, but for a mindset.

For a version of you that didn’t carry so much.

But here’s the thing no one tells you:

That version of you isn’t gone.

They’ve just been layered over.

Under the overthinking, the awareness, the growing pains…

they still exist. Not as someone you need to become again,

but as someone you can still visit.

In the way you laugh without stopping yourself.

In the moments you choose not to analyze everything.

In the small decisions where you let yourself be a little less guarded.

You don’t have to go back to who you were.

But you’re allowed to miss them.

And maybe, sometimes,

you’re allowed to borrow pieces of them

and bring them into who you are now.

Not as a step backwards.

But as a reminder

that you were once soft,

and you can still be.