Somewhere Between Then and Now
Old friends don’t know who I am now, and new friends don’t know who I used to be.
There is a quiet loneliness that lives in the spaces between our past and our present.
It settles in when you realize that some people who once knew every corner of you can no longer recognize the shape of who you have become. The ones who shared your inside jokes, your heartbreaks, your growing pains... They hold a version of you frozen in time. And though they loved that person deeply, that version is gone. You are no longer who they remember, and they are no longer who you knew.
When you try to reconnect, the conversation feels slightly off balance. You reach for shared memories, but they do not fit the same way. The rhythm you once had feels unfamiliar. They might still call you by the old nickname, laugh at the same stories, and ask about the same dreams, not realizing that those dreams died years ago or transformed into something new. You nod along, grateful for the comfort of familiarity, but also aware of the ache it carries. You are talking to someone who knows your history but not your heart anymore.
And then there are the new friends. They know your current laughter, your daily habits, your latest fears. They see the person who has been rebuilt, who has adapted, who has healed. But they don’t know the rawness it took to become this version. They don’t know the nights you cried in silence, or the people who helped shape your understanding of love and loss. They cannot see the ghosts of your younger self that still walk beside you, the ones who whisper when you make choices that feel unfamiliar even to you. You are a mystery to them, not because you hide, but because there is too much life to explain.
It can feel like standing between two mirrors, watching reflections that do not align. The past looks back at you with nostalgia, the present looks forward with uncertainty, and you are caught in the middle, trying to reconcile both. You want to be known fully, to have someone who understands both the person you were and the person you are, but that bridge is rare. It requires time, patience, and a willingness to sit with contradictions.
This in-between space is not a failure. It is growth. It means you have lived long enough to become unrecognizable, to evolve beyond your own expectations. It means you have shed versions of yourself that no longer served you. But still, it hurts to realize that belonging has splintered. You belong to different eras of yourself, and each era has its own witnesses.
Sometimes, when you find yourself sitting across from an old friend, you catch a glimpse of who you used to be in their eyes, and it feels like visiting a familiar home. And when you laugh with a new friend, you see the possibility of who you are still becoming. Both are real, both are true, and both are incomplete without the other.
Maybe learning to hold these halves together is a part of growth; to be at peace with being a story that no one else knows entirely. Because the only person who has seen every version of you, who carries the full arc of your becoming, is you.
Each person who enters our life stirs the water a little differently. The ones from our past and the ones in our present create overlapping Ripples that never stop moving.
Which of those Ripples still shape who you are becoming, and whose life might still be shifting because of you?
I hope you got something insightful out of this. It’s a small reminder that every interaction leaves a trace, and that connection is never truly lost.
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