“Maps of the People I Used to Be”

Maps of the People I Used to Be

By [Ali Rehman]

There are days when I feel as if my skin is made of maps — thin, fragile pages carrying the faint outlines of every version of me I’ve ever lived through. If I press my fingers into certain places, memories rise like old ink. Some lines are bold, carved by choices I was certain about. Others fade like watercolor trails, belonging to lives I almost lived but left behind before I ever learned their names.

I did not understand this until I began looking back, truly looking — not at the milestones or the shiny victories, but at the spaces in between. The quiet hours. The forgotten promises. The versions of myself that didn’t survive the growing.

This essay is my attempt to trace them, to map the people I used to be.

I. The Child Who Thought the World Was Always Kind

My first map begins with a small circle: a backyard, a mango tree, afternoons spent chasing light through leaves. In that version of me, the world was simple. Happiness came easily, like the breeze.

I didn’t know then that innocence was not something the world protected; it was something it tested.

When I look at that map now, the colors are soft but blurred around the edges. That child still speaks sometimes — whenever I laugh without thinking, or forgive too quickly, or trust that people mean well. I do not push him away. I let him sit beside me, even now.

II. The Teenager Who Mistook Noise for Identity

This version of me drew maps full of roads that went nowhere.

He tried too hard to belong — changing his clothes, his interests, even the way he spoke. He wanted approval like others wanted air.

I can still see the frantic scribbles on his map: arrows pointing in every direction, routes crossed out, new ones drawn, over and over. Every line says one thing:

“Choose me. Let me be enough.”

That teenager lives in the part of me that still worries about being liked, the part that edits messages three times before sending, the part that wonders if silence means disappointment.

I no longer resent him. He was only trying to build a home inside people who never had space for him.

III. The Dreamer Who Believed Love Would Save Everything

The next version of me walked with his heart in both hands, offering it to anyone who seemed lonely enough to hold it.

He thought love was a cure — not knowing that sometimes, love is just two broken mirrors trying to reflect each other.

His map is the most vibrant and the most painful. Red rivers. Blue oceans. Golden roads filled with hope that glowed so brightly it blinded him to the truth.

This map carries the first heartbreak — the moment the colors bled into one another, leaving only gray.

But he left behind something precious:

the capacity to love fully, even after being wrong about love.

I still thank him for that.

IV. The Adult Who Tried to Become a Machine

There was a version of me who decided that feelings were too heavy to carry. He folded them neatly and tucked them away.

Work. Achievements. Survival. Efficiency.

That was his compass.

His map looks like a city grid: straight lines, tall walls, no detours. Every street leads to productivity, not peace.

He didn’t know that ignoring emotion was its own kind of grief.

Eventually, the map cracked. Roads buckled. The city collapsed the day he realized that exhaustion is not a personality trait.

I keep a piece of that map in my pocket still — it reminds me that ambition is a fine place to visit, but a terrible place to live.

V. The Present Self — The Cartographer

And then there is me, the one writing this.

I am not defined by one map but by all of them — layered, overlapping, forming a landscape only I know how to read.

I have learned that I am not a single story. I am a compilation of many unfinished drafts. A collage of mistakes and triumphs. A library of emotions, some shelved neatly, some still scattered across the floor.

I no longer try to erase old versions of myself.

I trace them gently. I learn from their paths.

I thank them for surviving long enough for me to arrive.

Because every past self — the innocent, the insecure, the hopeful, the hardened — has handed me something I still need.

And now, when I look toward the future, I don’t try to predict the map. I simply walk forward knowing that whoever I become next will add another beautiful, complicated layer to this ongoing geography of my life.

Moral

We are not defined by one version of ourselves — growth is the art of gathering every past self and letting them guide us, not haunt us.

The maps of who we were are not mistakes; they are the pathways that help us become who we are meant to be.