I Miss Who I Was Before the World Got Loud

I Miss Who I Was Before the World Got Loud

by (Mujeeb ur Rahman)

Before expectations, noise, and pressure drowned my inner voice, I was someone softer, freer, and more myself.

There was a time I laughed without hesitation. A time when my joy didn’t need permission and my silence wasn’t mistaken for weakness. I was softer then. Unshaped by the world, untrained in pretending, unafraid of being misunderstood.

I miss that version of me.

Before the world got loud before the noise of opinions, judgment, and endless expectations filled my ears I lived simply. I trusted easily. I believed that people meant what they said. I thought love always stayed and that being kind was enough.

I didn’t know then that being enough would become a war. A constant balancing act of doing, saying, and becoming more just to meet standards I never agreed to.

As I grew, the voices around me multiplied.

Be strong.

Don’t cry.

Don’t speak too much.

Speak up more.

Be ambitious.

But don’t be intimidating.

Be beautiful, but effortless.

Be yourself, but only the version people like.

It was exhausting.

And somewhere between trying to fit in and trying to stand out, I lost the quiet little voice that used to guide me. The voice that said, “This is who we are. And that’s okay.

I began to shrink in rooms where I should have stood tall.

I began to question truths I once knew in my bones.

I smiled when I wanted to cry. I nodded when I wanted to scream.

And people clapped they called it maturity, growth, professionalism. But really, it was just me learning how to disappear in plain sight.

I miss the girl who used to write poems at sunset and dance in her room when no one was watching.

I miss the one who didn’t need validation to feel worthy.

The one who didn’t measure her worth by numbers, likes, or filtered comparisons.

But somewhere along the way, the world told me who I should be. And I tried to be it. God, I really did.

I wore confidence like a costume.

I answered I’m fine like a rehearsed line.

I chased goals that didn’t belong to me just to earn applause that felt empty when I got it.

And in the silence of my own thoughts, I began to ask:

When did I stop recognizing myself Because sometimes, late at night, when the noise fades just enough, I still hear her that younger version of me. She’s not angry. She’s not blaming me. But she is waiting.

She’s waiting for me to come back.

To remember what mattered before the world told me what should.

To feel again without fear.

To speak again without editing.

To be, simply, myself loudly, fully, unapologetically.

So I’ve started listening.

I’ve started unlearning the rules that never felt right.

I’ve started choosing peace over performance.

And I’ve started allowing silence not the heavy kind, but the healing kind to help me hear my own voice again.

I’ve begun finding pieces of myself in the smallest places:

In the pages of an old journal.

In the warmth of morning tea.

In songs I used to love.

In mirrors where I no longer criticize, but observe with gentle curiosity.

I’m not all the way back to her and maybe I never will be. Maybe I’m not supposed to go back. Maybe I’m meant to evolve, but carry her with me. The softness, the wonder, the truth of her.

Because I don’t want to silence the world. I just want to turn the volume down enough to hear my own heartbeat again.

This time, I want to live slower. Truer.

Not to prove anything. Not to impress anyone. But to feel free in my own skin.

To love without calculation.

To rest without guilt.

To speak without shrinking.

I miss who I was before the world got loud

But I’m learning to be her again, with the wisdom of everything I’ve walked through.

And maybe, just maybe

The world doesn’t have to get quieter.

Maybe I just have to get better at listening to myself.