Let The Old Self Die So You Can Be Reborn

Letting go of the person we used to be

I don’t know her anymore. Strange, she used to be me. We did so many things, spent so much time together. We laughed, we cried, we walked down moonlit paths at night planning the future we will share together, the dreams we will build. But it’s all gone now.

I no longer recognize the person, let alone talk about old times. I can’t appreciate the things we had in common or relate to what used to lighten her day. It’s like swimming against the tide that saps my energy. I refuse to put in the effort.

I walked around headless in a body that has forgotten how it arrived here. Every day, perfunctorily, I assembled and prepped her for another round of folie à deux. Slowly but surely I fall away, leaving bits and pieces of myself inside a pre-designed structure going through the barely functioning motions of life.

I visited familiar places, met up with old friends, thinking that we still have something together. I was wrong. The spark has gone. They don’t recognize me, claiming that I’ve changed, that I’m not like before. Everything feels foreign, even the memories do not carry with it the joy and the fun that once was.

I can’t talk about the old times because the old me is not present to reminisce about the days gone by. She’s not here to recall old memories. She stayed on, even though I walked away. I left the place; I left her behind like a piece of crumpled-up memory that I tossed in the trash can.

There was a time I knew exactly how life would work out. I was so sure of myself. Life was predictable and steady and every day was like déjà vu, daily going through an already lived life, repeating the cycle — then it came to an end. It feels foreign as if it was someone else’s life, another person’s memories. Perhaps I’ve forgotten, or perhaps those are dreams that no longer exist.

There were tribes whom I referenced as friends and family. Those are the ones I thought I couldn’t live without because of identity, status, and bond. But I don’t feel connected anymore. I don’t feel that they are a part of who I am becoming.

Time is such a misleading phenomenon. It does not pass. It happens over and over again as now, that unless we choose to walk away, it continues to repeat. The present moment encases within the frame of a single second divides the two realms. That second is hurtling forward. Sometimes we get trapped in the past and the past trapped in us. That’s how I was, until I understood something I hadn’t before: I was dead, just as she was — my old self. She exists in the shadows. I had to move on.

Perhaps you’re in a similar situation. You don’t feel you fit in anymore with the people and the environment. You’re no longer excited about the dreams you had or the people you know. The past does not accurately represent how you feel or who you are now.

There’s a distinct sense of something missing, that somehow your chapter in that story had ended and you know deep inside, something else is waiting for you on the horizon. You stop groping in the shadows and are finally willing to give up hope for a better past.

Soon it’ll be over. Everything will vanish along with your old self. Wounds will heal. Pain will stop. You’ll transcend limitations. The time will come when you’ll look back at those old photographs, turn the pages of memories and realize that the person staring back at you is an unfamiliar stranger. That’s because death will take place and some parts of you will die along with them. Where your old self is gone, you emerge as a new being.

So it is with everything else. Know for a fact that everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Meanwhile, enjoy the ride even when you think you’re lost, for soon it will end and you’ll have to alight and take another ride to your next destination.