Looking in the Mirror and Not Knowing Who You Are

You see yourself reflected back and it takes a second to recognize the face. The features are yours but the expression is someone else’s. The way you are holding yourself is different. The way you are looking at the world from behind those eyes is not the way you remember looking at it.

When did that happen? When did you become someone you have to think about before you can recognize? There was a moment somewhere where you started being unfamiliar to yourself but you can’t quite pinpoint when it was.

The person looking back has made different choices than the person you thought you were. They are quieter or louder or harder or softer in ways that don’t match the image you had of yourself. They move through the world differently, they react to things differently, and they want different things.

It’s not like you woke up different. It’s more like you kept making small adjustments and one day you looked and realized you’d turned into someone new, someone who handles things the way this new person handles them, and someone who thinks like this new person thinks. Someone who wants what this new person wants.

Part of it might be good. Maybe you needed to become someone harder to survive what happened, or you needed to become someone colder to stop getting hurt so much, or maybe the new version of you is stronger or smarter or better at protecting yourself. That’s probably something.

But there’s also the loss of whoever you were before. The softer, hopeful, and the version that believed things would work out. That version is gone and the new version took their place and now you are looking in the mirror at a stranger wearing your face.

People might not recognize you either. They might be trying to talk to the old version while the new version is standing there instead. They might be disappointed that you are not who they thought you were anymore or they might prefer the new version. Either way something changed and nobody can really go back to pretending it didn’t.

You could try to go back, or you could try to resurrect the old version and be who you used to be, but the old version lived in a different time and with different information. The old version didn’t know what you know now. Going back would mean forgetting things you can’t unforgive yourself for knowing.

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