The Versions of Me I’ve Outgrown

Growth is such a quiet, complicated thing. No one really talks about how lonely it feels to outgrow yourself — to look in the mirror and realize you don’t recognize the reflection, not because you’ve changed too much, but because you’ve finally started to see yourself clearly.

There are so many versions of me buried in the years behind me.
Each one carrying her own kind of ache.
Each one believing she was doing her best.

And she was.

The Girl Who Wanted to Escape

There was a time when I didn’t want to feel anything.
Feeling meant remembering — and remembering meant hurting.

So I found comfort in smoke and silence. I’d spend nights tucked into the corner of my room, the air thick with haze and the illusion of control. I told myself it was helping me relax, but really, I was trying to blur out the noise in my mind — the what-ifs, the regrets, the heaviness I didn’t know how to carry.

Being high became my favorite version of peace. The world softened, and for a few hours, I could breathe again. But the thing about temporary relief is that it always demands something back.

When the smoke cleared, so did the calm. My thoughts came rushing in — louder, meaner, sharper than before. I didn’t recognize the girl behind the glassy eyes and lazy smile. She looked like me, but she wasn’t really living.

I thought I was escaping my pain. I was really just escaping myself.

Now, when I think about her, I don’t feel shame — just compassion. She was trying to survive the only way she knew how.

The Girl Who Starved Herself to Feel Seen

For years, I believed my body was something that needed to be fixed.
I thought if I could make it smaller, quieter, lighter — maybe I’d finally be worthy of love, of praise, of peace.

There was a time I called hunger an achievement. A flat stomach meant control. Skipping meals meant strength. Compliments about “looking good” became the reward for self-destruction.

What people don’t talk about is how empty that control feels — how you can win the war with your reflection and still lose the battle with your heart.

I measured my worth in calories and mirror angles. I punished myself for being human. And when I finally realized what I was doing, the guilt nearly swallowed me whole.

Recovery wasn’t instant. It wasn’t even linear. Some days I fed myself joyfully. Other days, I apologized to my reflection for the harm I’d caused.
But slowly, I started choosing nourishment over numbers.
Wholeness over thinness.
Life over approval.

Now, when I see my body, I see resilience — not ruin.
I see softness that survived, strength that doesn’t need to prove itself.

The Girl Who Settled for Less

There was a time when I thought love had to hurt to be real.
I accepted bare-minimum affection and called it care.
I mistook attention for intimacy.
I thought being chosen, even halfway, was better than being alone.

I let people take from me — time, energy, softness — and then told myself I was “easy to love” because I didn’t ask for much. But I wasn’t easy to love; I was easy to use.

I learned that when you grow up believing your worth depends on someone else’s validation, you start shrinking to fit their comfort. You lower your voice, dull your light, and pretend it’s peace.

But love shouldn’t make you smaller.
It shouldn’t drain you.
It shouldn’t make you question your value every time someone turns away.

Now, I don’t chase being chosen — I choose myself.
I don’t beg for love — I embody it.

And I’ve learned that peace feels better than passion when passion burns you down.

The Woman I’m Becoming

I’ve outgrown the girls who hurt just to feel alive.
The ones who thought self-destruction was strength, who called chaos “comfort,” who mistook survival for living.

Now, I move differently.
I’m softer but stronger.
I’m slower but more intentional.
I crave alignment, not attention.

I’ve learned that healing isn’t about becoming someone new — it’s about remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.

These days, my peace looks like clean sheets, warm showers, candles that smell like home, and journaling my way through the noise. It looks like turning down invitations that don’t serve me, loving my body out loud, and surrounding myself with people who don’t ask me to shrink.

I am learning to exist without apology.
To love without losing myself.
To breathe without holding my chest in fear.

And that — that’s growth.

Final Thoughts

The versions of me I’ve outgrown aren’t gone — they live somewhere in me, quiet and forgiven. They remind me how far I’ve come, how deeply I’ve felt, and how much I’ve survived.

I don’t hate them anymore.
I honor them.
Because every mistake, every ache, every soft rebirth led me here — to the woman who finally knows her worth.

And maybe that’s what healing really is:
Not erasing your past, but making peace with the parts of you that thought they wouldn’t make it this far.