Recently, I caught myself missing a version of my life that no longer exists anywhere except inside my memory.
Not because it was perfect.
Actually, parts of it were confusing, lonely, and emotionally messy.
Yet somehow, I still miss it sometimes.
I think there is a specific kind of sadness attached to certain periods of life once they end. Not dramatic sadness. Softer than that.
The kind that appears unexpectedly when you hear a certain song in the supermarket or walk past a perfume that reminds you of a different version of yourself.
Sometimes I miss apartments I no longer live in.
The tiny details of them.
The evening light through unfamiliar curtains.
The sound of the washing machine running while I was studying.
The version of me sitting on the kitchen floor at midnight believing life would eventually make more sense than it did at the time.
I miss friendships that belonged to specific eras of my life, even when we naturally outgrew each other.
I miss cities that shaped me quietly.
Cafés I may never return to.
Train rides that once felt ordinary while they were happening.
The strange thing is that often we do not realise we are living inside meaningful moments until they already become memories.
Life leaves us before we fully understand we were inside something beautiful.
Maybe that is why nostalgia can feel so emotional sometimes.
Not because we necessarily want our old life back, but because certain versions of ourselves only existed there.
And once those chapters end, we never fully meet those exact versions again.
The older I get, the more I realise that growing also means grieving continuously.
Grieving old dreams.
Old homes.
Old dynamics.
Old identities.
Even positive change contains loss somewhere inside it.
I used to think healing meant becoming completely detached from the past. But now I think there is something human about carrying tenderness for the people, places, and versions of ourselves that once held us through different seasons of life.
Not everything is meant to stay forever.
Some things are simply meant to leave traces on us.
Like sunlight lingering on skin hours after leaving the beach.
Invisible to others.
But still there.