The Version of You They Don't Get to Know

There's something I've been thinking about lately.

When you lose someone who knew you for years, it feels like they leave knowing everything about you.

They know how you take your coffee. They know which songs you skip and which ones you turn up too loud. They know what you look like when you're trying not to cry. They know the things you're afraid of admitting out loud and the dreams you've been carrying since you were too young to understand how hard they'd be to reach.

For a while, I hated that.

I hated that someone who wasn't in my life anymore still knew so much of me.

It felt unfair somehow.

Like he got to leave with all those pieces while I was left trying to figure out what came next.

But something happened this week that made me realize I had it backward.

There are things about me now that he doesn't know.

Small things.

I have a favorite place to study.

There's a coffee shop I go to when I can't stand looking at another wall in the library. The coffee isn't particularly good, but there's a table in the back near an outlet that I've unofficially decided belongs to me.

I've learned that I actually like walking when it's snowing.

I've learned I can survive on four hours of sleep, although I absolutely do not recommend it.

I've learned that I am much better at arguing in front of a room full of people than I thought I would be.

And this week, I got something right that I wasn't sure I could.

My first instinct was to reach for my phone.

Not because I wanted him back.

I just wanted to tell him.

For years, he was the person I told.

Good news. Bad news. Completely meaningless news. If something happened to me, somehow it became something that happened to us.

My hand was already halfway to my phone before I remembered.

He isn't that person anymore.

It hurt.

Of course it did.

But then something else occurred to me.

He doesn't know this version of me.

He doesn't know the woman who figured this out.

He doesn't know the person who got herself through these last few months.

He doesn't know what I order at that coffee shop or which table is mine. He doesn't know which professor terrifies me or which class I'm starting to secretly love. He doesn't know the people I've met or the routines I've built or the hundreds of tiny decisions I've made without asking what he thinks first.

There was a time when I couldn't imagine becoming someone he didn't know.

Now I think maybe that's the point.

Maybe moving forward isn't only about creating memories without someone.

Maybe it's about becoming someone new in their absence.

Not because the person you were with them wasn't real.

She was.

I loved being her.

But she isn't the only version of me I'm allowed to be.

There's a whole person taking shape here that belongs entirely to me.

And for the first time, the fact that he doesn't know her doesn't make me sad.

Okay.

Maybe it makes me a little sad.

I'm still working on that part.

But it also makes me curious.

Because if I can change this much in a few months, I wonder who I'll be a year from now.

And I wonder what she'll know that I don't yet.

Maybe losing someone who knew everything about you isn't only an ending.

Maybe it's the first chance you get to meet the parts of yourself that were still waiting to be introduced.

Someone knowing the old version of you doesn't give them ownership of who you become next. Keep growing anyway. There are versions of you waiting ahead that even you haven't met yet.

Until next Tuesday.

— S.