A lone figure with an umbrella on a rain-soaked night street

A diary left open

I don’t know when I lost myself.

Somewhere between the years, the silence, and everything I never said, I became a stranger to myself.

Keep reading

Section one

Thoughts I never say out loud

These are the sentences that arrive at two in the morning and leave before anyone else wakes up. Take any of them with you if one of them is yours too.

An empty night train station platform under pale lamps

I miss the person I was before life taught me how to hide.
The hardest part of losing yourself is pretending you're still the same person.
I kept going, but somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling alive inside.
Nobody noticed the change because I learned how to smile through it.
Years passed, and I slowly became someone I never meant to be.
Sometimes I don't want to go back in time. I just want to feel like myself again.
I have memories of who I was, but I barely recognize that person anymore.
Maybe I'm not broken. Maybe I'm just tired of carrying everything in silence.

Section two

Somewhere along the way

A silhouette sitting beside a rain-streaked window at night

It didn't happen in one night. There was no accident, no single moment I could point at and say, there, that's where I ended. It was slower than that. A little quieter each year, until quiet was simply how I sounded.

I learned to be useful instead of honest. I answered questions before anyone finished asking them. I became very good at being easy to be around, and somewhere in that, I stopped being anywhere at all.

The distance between who I was and who I am is not a straight road. It's a hundred small turns I made without noticing, each one reasonable, each one away.

People ask how I've been and I say good, because the true answer would need an evening, and I never want to be the reason an evening turns heavy.

Now I live with things I can't explain. Not because they're dramatic, but because there are no words small enough to hold them without breaking.

A quiet nighttime cityscape seen from a rooftop

Section three

The things I never said

01
I got used to being the person who says he's fine.
02
There are things I never talk about because I don't know where to begin.
03
I wonder if the old me would recognize me now.
04
Some nights, the silence remembers everything.
05
Being tired is easy to explain. Being this tired is not.
06
A city full of windows, and not one of them is waiting for me.

Section four

A letter to my former self

A lone figure standing beneath a large pale moon on an empty road

Dear old me,

I'm sorry it took me this long to realize how far we've drifted apart. I don't know exactly when things changed, but I still remember the person we used to be.

You were loud in a way that embarrassed me later. You believed people when they said they'd stay. You made plans out loud, without checking first whether they were allowed.

I kept trading pieces of you for peace. A little less honesty for a little less conflict. A little less hope for a little less disappointment. It seemed like a fair exchange every single time, and now I can't find the parts I gave away.

If I could send anything back to you, it wouldn't be advice. It would be permission. Permission to be tired without apologizing. Permission to say the thing that sits in your chest for years instead of swallowing it one more time.

I'm not writing to bring you back. I don't think that's how it works. But I think you're still in here somewhere, under all the quiet, waiting for me to stop pretending I don't miss you.

I'm looking for you. Slowly, badly, but I am looking. Wait for me a little longer.

— Allan

A silhouette looking toward a distant faint light on the horizon

Still here

I may not be who I used to be. I may not have found who I’m supposed to become. But somewhere beneath all this silence, a part of me is still here.

And that is enough for tonight