I feel like there is a certain narrative that people say all the time “feeling like the old me again” like the old version of people is the ONLY version that you have to strive to be like.
It’s impossible.
Just like the seasons, the planet, and everything alive, we are meant to change and become different. Sure that specific version of you might have been a favorite of yours, you had some really good times, but good times are temporary.
So are bad times.
So are sad times.
Everything changes. And everything changes you. Every encounter, every experience, every person in or out of your life that you’ve met has changed your brain chemistry and evolved you in some way.
It is not only impossible to be “the old you” again physically, but mentally as well. So how can you stop chasing something you’ll never get back?
It starts with acceptance. And acceptance is something that I could probably write on for the rest of my life, but to keep it simple, just accepting who you are right now in this moment.
Maybe your motivation is different than that old you. Maybe you are less happy or have had a string of negative experiences. Instead of trying to dismiss what is going on and striving to keep an old you mentality, try working through who you are now.
Maybe you’ll start to realize that you’re someone completely new and it’s actually a GOOD thing.
I feel like people clutch so hard to their identity, especially if that identity is all people know them for. I can speak from personal experience on this.
In my addiction I shot pool every day. I was very good at pool and won multiple awards and played all over competitively. I was known around my community and the pool world that I was a great shooter and someone who you’d have to play your best against to beat.
Once I got sober I clung to this idea that I have to maintain this image of myself. I warred all the time about shooting pool but that brought me extreme anxiety because I had never shot pool sober. I had never been in bars or around places that have alcohol sober. So I had to let go of this “idea” of myself to truly start to heal from my alcoholism.
I’m still a great shot, I just don’t play nearly as often. There might never be an “old me shooter” who played for 8 hours a day all up and down the coast and in Vegas again.
There is a new me shooter. And when I play now, there’s some similarities but I can tell that I’m a different person now.
And I know that it is a good thing.
Words, from my heart. 