Do you ever just miss old versions of you?

Apr 24, 2025

I caught myself smiling at something today and realized I hadn’t smiled like that in years.

It wasn’t a big smile. It was the kind that lives in your eyes before it ever reaches your mouth. To be honest, it was more of a smirk. Something kind of sensual lived in it.

And just like that, a version of myself I hadn’t thought about in months came rushing in—clear, intact, preserved like a glass slide under a microscope. A version I only ever met in the presence of him.

It’s strange how someone can disappear without ever really leaving.

We didn’t unfollow each other. We just never followed to begin with. There are no tagged photos. No mutual friends feeding updates into the algorithm. I don’t know what his apartment looks like anymore, or what kind of clothes he wears these days, or what his favorite new songs are, or whether or not he ever made up with his brother.

And because we’re both introverts—quiet by nature, private by default—there’s no reason for our worlds to overlap again. No run-ins. No parties. No grapevine chatter. Just silence. Clean. Complete.

There’s no online trail to stalk. No playlists. No evidence. Just a long-deleted thread and the vague memory of a joke I’m probably still using, without knowing I borrowed it.

I don’t miss him. Not totally. Not in a romantic way. But I do miss the softness I allowed myself around him. I miss the permission I gave myself to say things without overthinking them. I miss everything we said with only our eyes in total silence, how rarely I checked my phone mid-conversation, how certain I was that being seen was the baseline—not a luxury.

That’s the hardest part of letting people go. Sometimes, it’s not the person you’re grieving—it’s the access they gave you to parts of yourself you no longer recognize.

There are entire traits I haven’t seen in myself since we stopped talking. Not because he took them with him. But because something about that dynamic allowed them to surface, gently, without needing explanation.

And when that version of me left with him, I didn’t realize right away. I just woke up differently one day. Still me, but rearranged.

That’s what I mean when I say I don’t miss him.

I miss who I got to be when he was around.

I miss how my voice sounded back then. How my thoughts moved without resistance. How easily I let myself unfold.

Now I don’t.

Now I measure everything I say, like each word might be a currency I’m not sure I want to spend. I’m careful with how I move. Not out of fear—just out of fatigue. I don’t trust that softness will be held, so I leave it in storage. I miss the version of myself who didn’t second-guess how much she felt.

And sometimes, I wonder: did he even notice that version of me? Did he recognize what he had access to? Or was she just background texture—another thing for him to play with when he got bored.

There’s a strange violence in realizing that people get to meet parts of you that never show up again.

Not because they broke you. Not because you can’t go back. But because that particular version of you—whatever frequency she was vibrating at—only ever made sense in those moments, with that person.

And now, that version of me lives nowhere.

We didn’t even say goodbye. We just… let time do what time does best—flatten everything into a timeline, then hide it somewhere behind new projects, new partners, three summers that came and went, and the quiet refusal to reach out first.

Sometimes I think if I ran into him again, I wouldn’t feel anything. And sometimes I think I’d shatter on impact. Not from love. Not from longing. But from the dissonance—of standing there as the person I am now, face to face with someone who only ever knew me as someone else. Someone I can’t get back to. Someone I didn’t know I’d miss.

That’s the part no one tells you:

When you lose someone quietly, you don’t just grieve them.

You grieve the version of yourself that never found a new place to live.