Who Am I Beneath the Fingerprints of Everyone I’ve Ever Loved?
8/6/2026
The concept of identity leaves the world wide open before us. An endless spiral of rebirth and death and looping from what you once loved to what you love now. We spend our lives trying new selves on for size, throwing them away when they no longer fit, only to recycle the process once time has passed—once we've been given the chance to start over.
In the midst of the newness of lovers, each passing season offers another chance to become someone new. What traits did I fall in love with within this person that I can now acquire as my own?
I believe when falling in love, and being in love, you subtly transform yourself. Your beliefs. Your way of experiencing life. How many of us took our mother’s handwriting, an old lover’s music taste, your closest friend’s way of laughter. We slowly mold into the things that we love, from the people we love. We are museums, consistently reflecting all that we love in this world, including the people.
The concept as a standalone is incredibly beautiful to me. I value the idea that every single person I have ever loved is traveling through new phases of life with me, even if they are not around to experience the newest version. It feels like still frames, suspended in time, each one capable of carrying you back to a version of yourself who was deeply in love, no matter how you feel about that person now.
Where I tend to struggle is, who am I apart from these traits I have gathered? Stripping back the layers of the lovers that I have acquired, am I still whole? Complete Did the process of acquiring begin when I was first held in my mother’s arms, or is it now that I have the emotional capacity to begin to unravel all that I am and want to become?
If I take away all that I have learned, I do not believe I am an untouched version of myself. I am no one without the teaching and love of others.
Despite my growing concerns of identity, maybe you need to meet new people and fall in love to unlock new parts of yourself. Parts you would’ve never known existed without them. Trying a new food or hobby that would become your favorite, traveling to a country that you will end up living, listening to music for the first time that would become the soundtrack to your life.
One of the greatest parts of the human experience is to show others the things we love and hold dear. Is it not the highest form of intimacy for them to adopt what you love?
Perhaps that is what makes it so unique—you cannot be your fullest and truest self without the act of experiencing love. Not that you cannot be fulfilled and know yourself in the absence of it, but that you may not meet every version of yourself that can exist without it.
And just maybe, that is the entire point. We offer up a new version of ourselves every time we begin to love someone new. A version that can only exist because of the teachings of the past love you received.
Maybe there isn't a pure version of you waiting underneath the fingerprints. Maybe the fingerprints are you.
I am sincerely grateful for all of the qualities I have stolen from lovers old and new. I wonder what traits they have taken from me.