Notes on Outgrowing Myself

All signs point to the universe forcing me to grieve my youth. It’s happening and since acknowledging it to myself the evidence is everywhere. First I noticed it in my wardrobe - clothes are always the most obvious. There’s a particular top I haven’t worn in almost two years that I just can’t get rid of because it reminds me of some really fun times I had in my twenties. There’s a pair of boots I bought for a Summer festival that I keep just in case I might go to another one. Never say never, but realistically…it’s probably not going to happen. Honestly, sometimes I look at my wardrobe and get hit with so many memories I wonder if it’s actually healthy for me to be hanging onto these things. And yet I’ve kept this past version of myself hung up in my closet just in case I want to rebel against who I am becoming.

My flat is speaking to me in the the same way and for some reason it’s all I can focus on. For example, a piece of art I bought when I was twenty-eight that I definitely wouldn’t pick now. Mugs that don’t match what I’d want my home to feel like if I were starting from scratch today. Little things that are technically fine, but that all add up to a room that belongs to a younger version of me.

Admitting this to myself and writing this article has made me realise that perhaps I haven’t been able to fully move forward because I’ve been hanging onto the old me so, so tightly.

Some of it, I think, is about my online following. I’ve been on the internet for a long, long time and people have known me a certain way for over a decade. Young and a bit chaotic (at least that’s how I’ve felt I’ve presented myself at times). Subconsciously I think part of why the top still hangs there and the art is still dotted around my flat is because those things are easy markers of the person I’ve been and how my audience has known me. To change feels like I’m signalling that I’m ashamed of my past self in some way or worse…pretending she never existed in the first place.