That strange period in life when you are no longer who you used to be,
But you are not entirely sure who you are becoming either,
You notice it in small things first,
The things you enjoy start to change.
Some people feel closer,
Others slowly stop feeling like home.
Places you once loved suddenly feel unfamiliar
Also, somewhere completely new can feel strangely right.
You become less interested in explaining yourself.
Less interested in being understood by everyone.
For a long time, I thought growing meant becoming more certain,
Knowing what I wanted,
Knowing where I was going,
Having answers when people asked about the future.
But life has made me question that so badly,
Maybe growing is not about becoming certain,
Maybe it is about becoming honest,
Honest about what you want,
About what you have outgrown,
About the people you miss,
About the things you thought would matter forever and somehow no longer do,
There are versions of us that we spend years building.
The quiet one,
The strong one,
The edgy one,
The lonely one,
The lovely caring one,
The one who never needs help,
The one who always has a plan,
The one who keeps going even when her world is upside down,
And sometimes life changes enough that those versions no longer fit,
Not because they were wrong.
They simply belonged to a different chapter.
I think we underestimate how many times we become someone else,
Not dramatically,
Not all at once,
But slowly.
Through conversations,
Through disappointments,
Through friendships that changed us,
Through people we lost,
Through places we left,
You can wake up one day with that feeling,
Something you used to tolerate no longer feels acceptable,
That something you once feared no longer scares you,
That something you desperately wanted no longer feels like yours,
And there is something both unsettling and freeing about that,
Because changing also means letting some things go,
Some expectations,
Some old versions of yourself,
Some relationships that could’ve been,
Some ideas about how your life was supposed to look.
We tend to think of letting go as losing something,
But sometimes it is simply making room,
For a different kind of peace,
For new people,
For experiences you could not have imagined before,
Maybe that is why certain moments feel like standing between two places,
You know you have left one behind,
You just have not arrived at the next one yet,
And that space can feel uncomfortable.
There is nothing to hold onto there except yourself,
No clear ending,
No guaranteed beginning.
Just the feeling that something is changing.
I am learning not to rush through that feeling,
To let some things remain unresolved for a while,
To accept that not every chapter needs an immediate replacement,
Some endings need silence.
Some changes need time.
Maybe life is not a straight line from one version of ourselves to another,
Maybe it is a collection of departures and arrivals.
We leave certain things behind,
We carry others with us,
And somewhere in between, we change,
Not into someone completely new,
Just into someone a little more aware of what matters.
A little less afraid of what does not,
And a little more comfortable with not knowing exactly where the next station is,
Maybe that is enough,
To keep moving,
To notice who you are becoming,
And to know that you are still on your way.
