10/29/2026
Interestingly enough, I feel I have only been my conscious self for about two years.
When I look back on my life, images from my adolescence and college years drift through my mind. I can picture myself, remember the people I loved, the decisions I made. But sometimes, I feel more like a witness to that girl's life than the person who actually lived it.
Or perhaps I wasn’t analyzing my life this extensively during these times.
I went through every phrase, every experience; however, I have never truly felt this connected to myself and my human experience until recently. It’s as if I had a new brain development at 22 on the roadmap to full development by 25.
I started paying attention to myself. My habits, my desires, the things I was drawn to, the things I tolerated, the things I wanted to change. I began to question why I made certain decisions and what, exactly, I was trying to get out of them.
For the first time, I felt as though I was participating in my own life with intention rather than simply moving through it.
And with that realization came a strange feeling. If I had only recently become so conscious of myself, what had I been doing all those years before?
It's an odd thing to look back at a younger version of yourself and feel both intimately connected to her and entirely separate from her. I can recognize her in my memories, but I don't always recognize myself in her decisions.
It's tempting to look at those years as a series of mistakes, detours, or incomplete versions of who I was supposed to become. To assume that the person I am now is somehow more authentic than the person I was then.
But the more I reflect on it, the less I believe that to be true.
I might understand myself better now, but that doesn't mean the girl I was before was any less real.
Despite feeling this way, my deep reflection has led me to the conclusion that every stage has been of equal importance. I could not be in this current phase of life without enduring life’s endless contortions, as well as every version of myself I contorted myself into.
This goes beyond aesthetic choices, such as an emo phase in middle school (which was very real) and being a surfer girl in college. It is also deeper than experiencing trauma that defined your environment, physical and mental.
You don't get to choose every experience that shapes you, but you have some agency in deciding what you carry forward from it.
So much of who we are begins as a response.
A response to our parents, our friends, the people we love, the places we live. A response to the loneliness we experience when we're alone, the comfort we find in certain people, or the discomfort of realizing that the life we've built no longer feels like our own.
And sometimes, the most insignificant decision becomes the beginning of something we could never have anticipated.
Let me explain my own butterfly effect.
In college, I started dating someone from Europe. Through that relationship, I became interested in learning a new language, listening to foreign music, watching international films, and eventually traveling to Europe for the first time.
I discovered how much I loved being somewhere unfamiliar. I loved the feeling of not knowing everything, of having to pay attention, of realizing that the world operated in ways I had never considered.
I started becoming interested in things that previously would have seemed entirely outside my world. I started watching soccer. Cared more about different international developments. For about six months, I listened almost exclusively to French music, which is a perfectly normal thing to do when you're in your twenties and have decided to make a new interest your entire personality.
Looking back, I can see how much of the person I am today began there.
Not necessarily because of the relationship itself, but because of everything it introduced me to. I discovered an appetite for learning about different cultures, an appreciation for unfamiliar things, and a desire to experience a life that extended beyond the one I had always known.
Then the relationship ended.
It was an awful breakup, and I found myself in therapy every week, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. There were things I had to work through, things I had to reconsider, and parts of myself I needed to get reacquainted with.
But even in the middle of all that, I couldn't undo what I had learned.
I couldn't suddenly become someone who no longer loved Europe, who no longer cared about languages, who no longer wanted to explore the world. The relationship had introduced me to things that had become mine, entirely separate from the person who had first introduced them to me.
I could lose the relationship without losing everything I had discovered through it.
I think there's something important in that distinction.
We spend so much time trying to separate ourselves from the things that hurt us. We swear off certain people, certain places, certain experiences.
Sometimes we need to. Sometimes leaving is the healthiest thing we can do. But I wonder how often we mistake leaving something behind for needing to leave behind everything it taught us, too.
I didn't need to keep the relationship to keep the parts of myself that had grown within it.
I started figuring out what I liked when there was nobody else in the room to influence the answer. I moved into a new apartment by myself, decorated with documentation of my travels, fashion iconography, and little pieces of a life that felt increasingly like my own. I went skydiving, traveled to Italy, got a tattoo, took a French class, and spent more time with friends than ever. It was the most alive I’d felt in years.
And somewhere along the way, yet another phase began.
I realized that my interest in foreign cultures extended beyond Europe. I started listening to Spanish and Brazilian music, exploring new creative interests, and finding myself drawn to parts of the world I had barely considered before.
My world kept getting bigger.
I felt so excited with who I was becoming, enjoying my newfound discoveries and myself as a person. It felt as if I was a snake unveiling a brand new skin after months of slowly shedding the last. There was something fascinating about realizing that my personality wasn't a finished product.
Then, when you’re absolutely not looking for it, a new phase starts. You will never know in advance until it happens.
I went to a World Cup watch party, largely because of my relatively recent discovery of soccer, and met my current partner, a gorgeous and extraordinary kind Brazilian man.
Of all the things I could have predicted about my life a few years earlier, this probably wouldn't have made the list.
But there I was.
None of these things had been part of some grand plan. Most of them had simply happened, and I had responded to them as best I could.
Yet somehow, they had all become part of the same story.
I don't mean that every difficult experience happens for a reason, or that the universe carefully arranges our heartbreaks to deliver us to the people we're supposed to meet. I don't believe we need to turn every painful thing into a blessing to justify having experienced it.
Some things are simply painful. Some things take more from us than they give. And sometimes, the only meaningful thing we can do with an experience is learn how to live beyond it.
But I do think we have some say in what we carry forward.
After everything I endured, I could have decided that love wasn't worth the risk. I could have become suspicious of anything that reminded me of the person I had been before it ended. I could have treated my hurt as evidence that I should never allow myself to be that vulnerable again.
Instead, I kept exploring. I kept allowing myself to be interested in things I didn't understand. I kept making room for people and experiences that might change me.
Not because I knew everything would work out, but because I didn't want one painful experience to dictate the limits of the life I was willing to live.
And somewhere along the way, I fell back in love with myself.
Not because I had become a completely different person, but because I had started to appreciate the person who was already there. I was building a life that felt exciting to wake up to, a life that reflected my interests, my curiosity, and the things I wanted to experience for myself.
Meeting my partner became another beautiful part of that life. But the life itself was already happening. Phases are not defined by relationships, but the person we continue to evolve into.
I think that's what I want to remember when I look back on the different versions of myself.
I had to go through this terrible, yet amazing era to reach the point I am today. And I am so grateful I did, as it was vital to me becoming who I am and who I want to be. I’ve never felt so passionate about leading a curious life full of love, empathy, exploration, and delicateness.
And the girl I am now is not the final destination of all those experiences.
I'm just the person living this particular phase.
I might look back at who I am today in a few years and feel that same strange distance. I'll see the photographs, remember the places, and wonder how I could have been so certain about certain things.
And that's okay.
Maybe being conscious of ourselves doesn't mean finally arriving at some fixed, authentic version of who we're supposed to be. Maybe it means becoming more comfortable with the fact that we're always in the process of becoming someone.
So embrace the person you are today. Give a little grace to the person you were yesterday.
And enjoy this phase while you're in it.
The next one might begin somewhere you never expected, with something as ordinary as a song, a plane ticket, or an invitation to watch a soccer game.
You truly never know, and that’s the best part.