The Version of Me That Died Quietly

Author..shahjhan hamraz

don’t remember the exact moment I stopped being myself. There wasn’t a car crash. No dramatic betrayal. No stormy breakup with screams and broken dishes. It didn’t happen like it does in the movies, with violins playing as you cry in the rain. It was quieter than that. So quiet, in fact, that not even I noticed it was happening—until I looked in the mirror and saw someone I didn’t recognize.

I was twenty-eight when I realized the version of me I used to be had died.

She was the girl who used to laugh too loud in coffee shops and scribble poems in the margins of napkins. The one who danced alone in her room to songs she didn’t know the words to. She was weird in the best way, reckless in a harmless way, and soft in a way the world hadn’t yet taught her to regret.

And now?

Now I rehearse every word before I say it. I scroll through life instead of living it. I delete text messages I never send. I shrink myself to fit the expectations of people who wouldn’t notice if I vanished completely.

I didn’t kill her. But I didn’t fight for her either.

It started with small things. Turning down plans because I was “too tired,” even though it was really anxiety. Saying “I’m fine” instead of “I’m falling apart.” Smiling when I wanted to scream. Saying yes when everything in me wanted to say no. Piece by piece, I traded authenticity for acceptance. And acceptance, I learned too late, is a poor substitute for love.

Grief isn’t just for the dead. It’s for the parts of ourselves we lose to survival.

I think we all go through it at some point. Some of us are loud about it—we cut our hair, quit our jobs, move across the country. Others, like me, fold into ourselves until we forget we were ever whole. We become reliable shadows. Good employees. Polite friends. Easy partners. We become predictable and quiet and safe.

But safe is not the same as alive.

One night, I sat in my car outside a friend’s party I couldn’t bring myself to enter. I watched people laugh through the windows—people I once knew, or maybe never really did. My heart felt like it was beating from someone else’s chest. My hands shook for no reason other than the weight of pretending had finally gotten too heavy.

And it hit me—I miss her.

I missed the version of me that didn’t need anyone’s permission to exist. The one who believed in magic, who trusted people too easily, who cried at commercials and thought she could change the world with a pen. She was naïve, sure. But she was free.

I think the world teaches us to mourn others more than ourselves. We hold funerals for those who pass away but never acknowledge the quiet deaths happening inside us every day. The death of wonder. Of risk. Of joy. Of self.

But here’s the part I never expected: just because a part of you dies doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.

The girl I used to be? She’s still here—beneath the layers of compromise and politeness and fear. She’s in the songs I still hum under my breath. In the journal I hide in the back of my closet. In the poems I write at 2 a.m. and never show anyone. She’s waiting. Patiently. Quietly. For me to be brave enough to choose her again.

So this morning, I got up and didn’t reach for my phone first thing. I poured my coffee and wrote a terrible poem on the back of a receipt. I went for a walk with no destination. I let the wind mess up my hair. I said “no” to something that didn’t feel right. Small rebellions, maybe. But they felt like resurrection.

Not every comeback is loud. Sometimes, it’s a whisper. A breath. A blink.

But I heard her.

And she’s not gone.