"I miss the old you."

When someone says they miss who you were in contrast to who you are.

I have been missing. These past few months have been hard on us all. Wherever you are, I hope that you know you are not alone in your hardships and that it is so relative to experience that everyone can both understand and not in the same moment.

(also, I don’t have an editor this week, but I had to write. Please be kind with my spelling and grammar if you can. If not, maybe skip this one.)

I have so much to tell you, I have been uncertain where to start. But then someone sent me a text message late last week that cut deep in a way that I needed to explore. The text message was this, “I am going to miss you when you run away. I saw for a moment today the person you were before all of this. I miss that person.”

In my heart, I know that the person who sent this meant well. These words reflect love even tho they were so painful for me to read. It got me thinking, do you miss the old you? The you before the pandemic? The (often) young you with the carefree joyous spirit? That person. The person who lived in the moment and could hold other’s pain without letting it weigh you down.

That person believed in right and wrong. That person stayed for the fight. This person, this person that I have become, is running. And sullen. Perhaps a little (more than a little) jaded and very tired. I miss the old me too. But as Taylor Swift says, “she’s gone.”

Most of our lives are threaded with the idea of a diachronic unity - a sense of ourselves as a whole. Or one. Even through changes in our hormones, in our locations, in cells, in all aspects of our lives we change. It is this felt sense that we are the same person even though we are also completely not the same person. The idea of a continuous self grounds us in the past, future, and present. But is delusional. Like most things.

If you could go back to a “you” in the past, would you? Without intention, this text message brought a cascading set of anxieties about the person I have become and their worthiness, their likeability.

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At a dinner party recently, I met a woman who told me that there were two types of people in this world. An oversimplification, but hear me out for the sake of drama.

1. People who make it through hard things and become stronger.

2. People who experience hard things and become weaker.

I love this sort of binary. It is fascinating, easy to understand, and directly shifts populations into something you can dismiss or lean into with one simple rule. She said that her roommate was one of the second type. Each time she hit something hard, she crumbled a little more. This was starting to wear on their friendship. Not that she did not love her, they had been friends for 20 years or something, but more she considered herself as a fighter. As someone who could make smart decisions. Someone who could grow from adversity. That she had agency in this world.

Wired magazine this month proclaimed that feeling a sense of control was out, feeling like there was no free will was out and that just living life was “in.” I am stuck in the middle of feeling in my gut that I have very limited (if any) control and desperately longing to just enjoy life while I can.

“I have to admit, I am a person who is crumbling,” I said. The mindset of taking what life gives you and making lemons is very alluring, but it also puts tremendous pressure on every situation to be something of more than perhaps it is. Some things just suck.

I liked this woman very much, even tho we had just met. As she sipped her drink in the downtown Oakland sun, I listened to her brilliance about how she was going to save the healthcare system in California. I had this sense that she actually could. And she would. There is so much comfort in knowing there are people out there who are working to make things better for everyone. And I appreciated her so much despite knowing so little about her.

As I mentioned the rapid erosion of my understanding of my strength and self, I watched her face display all the judgements she had about “folks like me.” Strong people becoming weaker through lived experience. Even if you disagree, there is some truth to it.

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I am trying to be ok with it. Not being the person I was, or what other people want. I am not sure why it is so hard to let go of the idea that the past you was the “best” version of you. We all want so badly for the best version of ourselves be ahead, something to look forward to. That we should be working linearly upward, learning and growing in positive ways. I miss the old me too. But I am not sure what to do with that information.

Should I long to go back in time? The permission to miss an older concept of self doesn’t seem to yield anything useful. Only sadness and frustration with the forces of space and time. Why don’t they make exceptions for humans that were perhaps better humans in the past? Or if we could fast forward to better versions of us that are unknowable but must still exist in the future? Time and space, if you are listening, you should really make exceptions for hindsight and possibility with the use of time travel. Just saying. If we could exist in a constant state of our best humanness, wouldn’t that be good for everyone?

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For what it is worth, I like you as you are. Even if we have never met. I like you even more if you are falling apart. Or keeping it together. Or let’s be real, you are probably doing both in this very moment. Existence is this weird random miracle that I want to celebrate in all its forms.

XOXO, Carissa

PS I have been taking a break - M has had some serious health issues that we are working through. I long for the moments when I can process things on here, with you, but also have the fear that what I have to say is not worth saying. Which is also fine. I just want to provide value somewhere, and looking for where that is.