The World’s A Little Blurry: July 29

I’ve always thought that the world’s a little blurry.

Every season leaves behind a version of ourselves we’ll someday miss.

There were seasons of my life that I didn’t fully appreciate while I was living through them.

In this lifetime, we are always leaving something behind.

Life is made of transitions.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m older now, or maybe there is simply something about the rainy season that makes me nostalgic.

I think about my childhood.

Being a kid and playing in the pouring rain. Being seven years old again, kicking balls around the school grounds and running across the campus. In the afternoons, we would take the sheath of a coconut leaf, hold on to the petiole, and use it as a makeshift slide from the top of the mountain all the way down.

Oh, how quickly time flies.

And then, somehow, I fast-forwarded into adulthood and found myself working in a hospital.

Friendships changed.

People moved away.

Homes became memories I return to whenever I miss my family or whenever I’m exhausted.

And I learned something along the way that every time we move forward, we quietly leave someone behind—an earlier version of ourselves.

I didn’t know I would miss my younger self.

But every time I read the letters she wrote to me, or write letters to her and to my future self, I can’t help but become a little sentimental.

I miss the girl who walked to school.

The early-morning routine of taking a twenty- to thirty-minute walk to school. The girl with her backpack and quiet enthusiasm. The girl who was eager to graduate so she could finally go to the city.

As I look back, I’m grateful to her.

She loved learning. She enjoyed her time in school. She embraced the journey, and she did so excellently.

When I think about the life she had in college, I know she probably missed her younger self, too.

But she coped.

And I’m glad she did.

There are days when I miss being the daughter who came home to her parents.

After an exhausting shift, sometimes all I want is to go home to Mama’s dinner table, dig into her cooking, and listen to her and Papa tell stories about what happened during the day.

And then, of course, I’d be asked to wash the dishes—which I would always find some excuse to avoid until the youngest ended up doing the chore.

I miss it.

Especially in the quiet, I sometimes miss the noise at home.

And it might be uncharacteristic of me, but I also miss myself as the student who worried about exams.

The last-minute, late-night cramming before exam day. The adrenaline that shattered the slumber of my procrastinating self.

I miss the teenager who dreamed about the future.

The girl who dreamed about the very day and the very life I am living now.

Sometimes, when I think about the present, I wonder if she’s proud of me.

I wonder if I’m living the life she envisioned.

And if I’m not, I hope she will still believe that I can make the future better than this.

And then there is the young woman who thought adulthood would look completely different.

She was wrong.

In some ways, it’s still the same.

The difference is that responsibility has shifted and accumulated. The stakes are higher. The stress has increased.

At the time, those things probably felt ordinary.

Now, they’re precious.

Sometimes, we don’t realize that we’re living a memory.

We don’t know that an ordinary moment will someday become something we wish we could revisit.

There are ordinary moments we don’t recognize as significant until they’re gone.

A last day of school.

A final conversation with someone.

The last time everyone in the family lived under one roof.

The last ordinary afternoon before life changed.

We don’t hear a bell announcing, “This is the last time.”

We simply live it.

And so, I tell myself to live this life as though I’ve been poured out with a storm of courage and fight.

I want to prove to my future self that I did everything I could to give her the life she deserved.

Not because she was simply born for it, but because I worked for it.

Because when I look back at the versions of myself I was once so eager to outgrow, I realize that some of them were not easy to love.

There was a time when I couldn’t wait to grow up.

I wanted independence.

I wanted to leave certain insecurities behind.

I was impatient with who I was.

And yet, years later, I feel tenderness toward that person.

I realize she was doing the best she could with what she knew.

And I’m grateful that she resisted, persisted, and remained consistent despite the self-loathing I sometimes carried toward her.

Self, each day I’m learning to love you a little more.

To embrace all of you.

I’m in my mid-twenties, and I’m beginning to understand that growing is both gaining and losing.

As I grow older, I gain wisdom. Through education and experience, I’ve learned to see life with more discerning eyes.

I gained the independence I looked forward to as a child.

I gained experiences that the younger me would have loved to hear about.

I gained a confidence she could not always sustain.

I gained qualifications, found a job, and stepped into responsibilities that came with adulthood.

And I accepted the role.

But growing came with losing, too.

I lost some of the innocence that came with being a child.

I saw the darker side of life—the bad, the painful, and the unthinkable things. My eyes opened not only to discernment, but also to the disappointment that life isn’t made entirely of unicorns, rainbows, and sunny days.

The simplicity of life was lost, too.

I’m no longer simply thinking about what snack to eat at three in the afternoon or what game to play with the friend I invited home.

I lost the familiar routines of going to school, church, and home.

Studying.

Reading.

Writing.

Doing household chores.

Serving and leading in church.

I lost some of my childhood friends.

We became busy building our own lives. We didn’t always have time for one another anymore, and I understand that. Growing up means people sometimes take different roads.

I lost some of my childhood expectations, too, because now I am living the reality I once imagined.

I learned that not everything is handed to you.

You have to work for it.

In a way, I lost the version of me that once felt permanent.

The carefree joy.

The patience.

The almost relentless optimism.

The girl who prioritized other people more than herself.

The girl who trusted too easily.

And perhaps that’s why growing up can feel both beautiful and sad.

But as I see it now, it is good to look back.

It is good to be nostalgic.

But I’m also learning to accept my journey as it is.

The memories shaped me into the person I am now.

The pain strengthened me.

The failures motivated me to keep trying.

The little wins pushed me to keep going.

The joy made my life brighter.

I love looking back.

But honestly, I don’t want to go back.

As I grow older, I’m learning to appreciate life—to appreciate and accept my past in all its imperfections.

Because honestly, you can miss a season without wanting to return to it.

You can miss being a child without wanting to give up adulthood.

You can miss your younger self without wanting to become her again.

Because she carried you here.

I don’t want to go back.

I simply wish I could visit sometimes.

And every time I talk to family or old friends and we reminisce about the past, they give me a glimpse of my childhood and of the person I used to be.

They remind me of my childhood habits, my old dreams, the way I used to speak, the things I was afraid of, and the person I was before adulthood changed me.

Sometimes, being around them feels like meeting an old version of myself again.

And I like how memory can make me feel happy for her—for the me I used to be.

Perhaps God isn’t asking me to preserve every version of myself.

Some versions were meant for certain seasons.

The child in me had a purpose.

The student had a purpose.

The uncertain young adult had a purpose.

And even the versions of me I didn’t particularly like were part of my becoming.

I thank God for who I was without needing to remain who I was.

I miss her, but I am grateful I don’t have to be her anymore.

Every season leaves something behind, but it also leaves something within us.

Maybe growing up is learning how to say goodbye without calling it loss.

Some versions of me had to end so this version could begin.

And perhaps someday, I will look back at who I am now with the same tenderness—with a little ache, a little gratitude, and the realization that I didn’t know I was living a season I would someday miss.

Because maybe that’s the strange thing about time.

We don’t only miss places and people.

Sometimes, we miss the person we were when we were with them.