Authors & Reviewers discussion

There is a moment in every life — quiet, almost invisible — when you suddenly realize that the person you’ve become feels distant from the person you once were.
Not better. Not worse.
Just… someone else.

Maybe it happens the first time you see an old photo and don’t recognize the eyes.
Maybe it happens when a familiar song no longer makes you feel anything.
Or when you laugh — and the sound feels foreign.

We grow, we adapt, we protect ourselves…
and somewhere along the way, parts of us fall behind.
Dreams we outgrew.
Wounds we hid.
Versions of ourselves we buried in order to survive.

So here is the question I’d love to explore with you all:

💬 When did you first realize you were drifting away from your earlier self?

Was it a painful moment?
A liberating one?
Or simply an observation — like noticing the seasons change?

And second:

💬 Do you believe it’s possible to “return” to an earlier version of yourself… or do we only move forward, carrying fragments of who we were?

I’m deeply curious to hear your stories, reflections, and truths.
Sometimes strangers understand us better than the people who think they know us.

Warm regards,
Vasyl

I’ll start.
For me, the moment I realized I was drifting away from who I used to be was when I saw an old photo and felt nothing.
Not nostalgia.
Not sadness.
Just… silence.
Like looking at a stranger who somehow had my face.

And yes — I sometimes wonder if we ever “return,”
or if life simply reshapes us again and again… until we no longer notice the pieces that fell off on the way.

Vasyl wrote: "I’ll start.
For me, the moment I realized I was drifting away from who I used to be was when I saw an old photo and felt nothing.
Not nostalgia.
Not sadness.
Just… silence.
Like looking at a strang..."

Hi Vasyl,

Thank you for sharing this personal insight with us; I am sorry you've " felt nothing"; perhaps without realising it, you were protecting yourself from hurt of " gone and lost"? But some time in future, you know, you might look at the same photo, and smile lots of happy smiles!

For me personally the change within myself is not sad or disturbing in anyway; just a matter of fact awareness that I (and everyone I know) are influenced by millions of things every day, and, overtime, this alters one's nature, quite inevitably.

The hope is always that the change is positive, although for many people, sadly, it is not. You know the idiom - people are like vine, they either get better with age or they become like vinegar..?

Its rather coarse but I think its true.

But the most inner essence of a person, I don't think it ever changes; its just that we add or remove many layers of " soul clothes" :) So in that sense, yes of course you can always come back to your previous self; you tend to need another person to help you with that, though, usually someone you are very close to.

Jasmine