06/20/2025: The Collective Me
I was staring at my diploma on the wall this morning and a thought kept going through my mind:
“This degree and the person who acquired it is a different version of me.”
But it’s still me, even though it’s a long lost echo in the grand scheme of me’s, like an out of body experience from a distant lifetime.
In my near thirty years of existence, I’ve been a baby, a child, a teenager and an adult. I’ve been a daughter, a granddaughter, a cousin, a niece, a friend, and a wife. And with each role I’ve played, there have been countless desires and demands that have evolved with me as I learn more about myself and as I grow.
There’s a reality where I may not have even survived childbirth, or that car accident in middle school. There’s a chance I could have made the wrong choice and decided to stay with someone else who wasn’t good for me in high school, and there’s also a chance I could have flunked out of college or decided not to deal with that racket in the first place.
Just as these possibilities are endless, my roles in other people’s lives and theirs in mine have evolved as well. I’ll always be certain things to certain people just by biological default, but to others, I’ll be other things that are not so objective. To someone, I’ll always be that kid in kindergarten that was their best friend, or the kid that hurt an innocent girl by signing that awful hate note that my friends “made” me sign in seventh grade. To someone - let’s be honest, probably the majority because once upon a time it was really true - I’m forever the goody two shoes who was sheltered and who was in the B or C tier popular crowd in high school, liked by all but loved by none.
To someone, I’ll always be the one to blame no matter how many times I confront them and try to set the record straight - granted, they still feel the need to find me every couple years and remind me of their existence, not the other way around. To someone, I’m a rekindled friendship or a brand new unexpected confidante, and they actually cared to stick around to watch me grow and as a result those bonds were strengthened.
I’m not who I was, even though all those experiences are forever a part of me, making up the collective me that sits here with my current amalgamation of thoughts, feelings and dreams. I would have never believed that I’d end up where I am now, even if I had a crystal ball. But here I am, and that’s solely due to all the events and relationships in my life that molded me up to this very moment.
And if I’ve evolved this much over this amount of time, I can only imagine what’s coming. I probably wouldn’t believe that either if I had the fortune of seeing ahead to the next few decades, so I’m perfectly content to sit here and just wait and see.