The Day I Forgot My Name

Losing Myself to Find What Matters

I didn’t wake up planning to forget who I was.

It was a regular morning. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm again. I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled to the mirror. That’s when it started.

I looked at my reflection, waiting for something familiar—some recognition. But the person staring back wasn’t someone I knew. The features were right. Same eyebrows, same scar on the chin from a childhood fall. But the eyes looked... borrowed. Like they belonged to someone trying on my face for size.

I laughed at myself. Shook my head. "You're just tired," I said to the reflection. It didn’t blink.

I went through the motions. Toast. Coffee. Emails. Notifications. A dozen names popped up on my screen, people asking for things, people addressing me like they knew me. I replied to all of them, not because I wanted to, but because I was expected to.

But the truth was—I didn’t feel like that person anymore. That name they kept using? It sounded strange, like an old nickname you outgrow but still answer to out of habit.

I stepped outside to clear my head. The streets buzzed with their usual chaos—cars honking, children dragging backpacks, shop shutters clanging open. But everything felt oddly distant, like I was watching the world through glass.

I ended up in a small park I hadn’t visited in years. I sat on a bench beneath an old jacaranda tree shedding purple petals like memories. An old woman nearby was feeding pigeons with patient hands. Her face was soft, lined with stories.

She glanced at me and smiled. “You look like you’re searching for something.”

“I might be,” I said.

“Lost it recently?”

“I think I lost it slowly. Like sand slipping through fingers.”

“Must’ve been important.”

“It was my name,” I said. “Or maybe not just the name… the feeling that comes with it. Who I used to be.”

She nodded, as if she understood more than I said. “Sometimes we carry names that were never ours. Titles. Labels. Expectations. And then one day, they fall off.”

“What happens then?”

“You get to choose again.”

We sat in silence. She tossed a few crumbs into the grass. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time I felt like me—not the employee, not the friend keeping up appearances, not the person who replied out of politeness. Just… me.

Nothing came.

But oddly, that didn't scare me. It felt like standing in an empty room with freshly painted walls. Clean. New. Possible.

When I opened my eyes, the woman was gone. Just a half-empty bag of birdseed on the bench beside me.

I walked home slowly, not because I was lost, but because I wasn’t in a hurry to be found.

Back at the mirror, I looked again. Same face. Same scar. But this time, I didn’t look for the old self. I looked for signs of someone I could become.

I didn’t remember my name that day.

But I remembered how to breathe.

I remembered how silence can be soft.

I remembered that starting over doesn’t always look like burning everything down. Sometimes, it’s as simple as asking:

Who do I want to be now?