Personal Reflection:
Winter pulls memory into strange shapes. You find yourself thinking about who you once were — the old reactions, the old habits, the versions of yourself that felt permanent at the time. Didion’s line lands with a quiet honesty: you don’t just outgrow old identities — sometimes you forget how they even fit you. There are people you used to be who feel like distant acquaintances now, faces you’d nod to politely if you passed them on the street.
Losing touch with old selves isn’t always graceful. Some versions of you died in rooms no one else saw. Some were shed out of necessity, not desire. Some you abandoned because they could no longer carry you without breaking. And some… some you miss without wanting them back. That’s the strange thing about growth — it holds both grief and gratitude at the same time.
You look back and see the decisions you made with the tools you had. The mistakes that taught you more than any triumph. The fears that shaped you. The stubbornness that saved you. Those earlier selves were stepping stones, scaffolding, incomplete drafts — important, but not meant to last. And part of becoming who you are now is acknowledging that you’ll continue to lose contact with old versions of yourself as you evolve.
Memory isn’t a museum.
It’s a landscape weathering in real time.
Maybe today is about honoring the people you used to be — not clinging to them, not wishing for their return, but recognizing their role in building the person who stands here now. You don’t owe nostalgia to your past selves. You owe them gratitude, and freedom. Let them rest where they belong: in memory, in distance, in the quiet archive of everything you’ve survived.
And if you’ve lost touch with who you were?
That’s not failure.
That’s movement.
That’s life continuing, even through the cold.
Reflective Prompt:
Which version of yourself are you grateful for — even though you no longer inhabit them?
Memoirs of Madness 