Maybe I wasn’t who I thought I was…

There are some things that stay with you. Mentally, you revisit them often, especially as you get older. Usually by then you’ve had a great deal of time to reflect. Maybe done a bunch of therapy, or maybe just sat with things long enough to come to a better understanding of yourself.

I created a lot of narratives around the people I loved.

When I was younger, I think I believed that if a connection felt deep enough, emotional enough, significant enough, then it would somehow remain sacred forever. I thought certain people would always exist in my life in some form because of what we had shared. Not necessarily in constant contact, but still tethered somehow. On some level, still carrying the same emotional weight for one another.

But time and reflection brought personal clarity. I’ve realised that people move through relationships very differently.

What I experienced as enduring emotional significance may have been experienced by someone else as simply a season of life. A meaningful season perhaps, even a loving one, but not something they carried forward in the same permanent way that I did.

And I think that has been one of the harder parts of growing older for me. Realising that maybe I romanticised some of my relationships. That the intensity I felt, the closeness, the depth, even being deeply needed, is not always the same thing as being deeply loved in a sustainable way.

I tended to assign familial meaning, permanence and emotional depth to certain bonds because that is genuinely how they felt to me at the time.

I think losing my family probably shaped more of this than I realised at the time. Looking back now, I can see that some friendships became emotionally bigger to me because, in some ways, I was trying to create family out of friendship.

I think I wanted to believe that the love and emotional investment I poured into people had created something enduring. A kind of invisible safety net of connection. I had this quiet idea in my head that no matter what happened in life, there would always be people there. Not necessarily physically close, but emotionally tied somehow because of what we had shared.

Some of those relationships were beautiful. Some were unhealthy. Some were both.

But I also understand now that understanding someone does not obligate me to continue enduring them. Missing someone is not the same thing as wanting them back in my life. And not everyone who misses us deserves renewed access to us either.

I think there was a time when being sought out again felt validating to me. Proof that I had mattered deeply. Proof that what I gave had lasting impact.

Now I think something simpler has replaced that need.

An understanding that my value does not need to be measured by who returns, who stays, or who finally recognises what I offered them years too late.

It may have been a hard pill to swallow, but maybe the reality is this:

Maybe I wasn’t who I thought I was to them… and maybe they weren’t who I thought they were either.