Versions of Us

...on friendships that fade, the selves we carry, and why joy can't wait

There’s a strange kind of heartbreak that comes with catching up with someone you used to love in the casual, everyday way.

Not a romantic heartbreak, not exactly. But the kind that hits you in the chest anyway. The kind you don’t see coming. You meet for coffee, or drinks, or you’re just texting late at night like old times. And for a moment, it feels like nothing’s changed. Until it does. They laugh differently. The rhythm is off. You reach for a shared memory and find only your own hand. And you realise: the version of them you were friends with doesn’t live in them anymore.

Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe you have. Probably both.

It’s jarring, not because change is wrong, but because no one warns you that you might one day be nostalgic for a person who still exists.

And maybe that’s the part that hurts the most: realising you weren’t just trying to see them again. You were trying to see you. The you who existed in that friendship. Who came alive in that particular orbit. Who laughed like that, dressed like that, believed in things you forgot you believed in.

Sometimes, reconnecting with old friends is a quiet kind of grief.

But sometimes, it’s a resurrection.

There are certain people who don’t shift shape so much as they solidify. The friends who meet you after months or years and still get you. They don’t ask for a status update. They don’t need the whole backstory. They just sit beside you and speak your language like they never stopped. And something softens. Something you thought had to be outgrown suddenly doesn’t.

You remember the version of yourself that sang in the car with the windows down, that stayed up all night talking about nothing, that dared to want things out loud. You remember that you never stopped being her. She just got buried under layers of “what now?” and “who should I be?”

We don’t leave our old selves behind. We layer over them. Like rings in a tree. Like sediment in riverbeds. We are made of versions.

And yet, we treat happiness like a finish line. Like it’s only allowed once we’ve earned enough, achieved enough, healed enough. We hang our joy on distant milestones: after the raise, after the relationship, after the body, after the book. We say “later” so often we forget to ask when later actually is.

But joy isn’t a prize. It isn’t waiting at the end of the road. It’s waiting in the middle of it.

In a half-decent coffee. A song you didn’t expect. A friend’s familiar voice. A breath. A moment of stillness. A laugh that doesn’t ask for anything back.

You’re allowed to feel good before you have it all figured out.
You’re allowed to feel happy while things are messy.
You don’t need permission to enjoy the parts that are working, even if others are not.

Maybe the truest kind of maturity isn’t constant evolution, but integration - allowing all the versions of yourself to coexist. Not judging the younger ones, not disowning the current one, not postponing kindness to the future one. Just... being here. Being okay. Even if it's incomplete.

So if someone brings an old version of you to the surface, let them.
And if someone reminds you of what you’ve lost, grieve it.
But don’t let any of it keep you from noticing this version, right now, who deserves joy without a checklist.

You are not just one story. You are a thousand pages, all being written at once. And you don’t have to wait until the ending to underline the good lines.

With love,
B