I tried to rebuild the girl I once was piece by piece, only to realise she no longer fits inside the life I live now.
I did not go looking for my old self out of nostalgia. I went looking for her because something in me felt wrong in a way I could not name, the way a room does when a picture has been taken off the wall and the lighter square refuses to blend in. I could feel the outline of who I used to be everywhere, and I whole-heartedly believe that if I can find her again, she’ll fix me. She’ll fix all my mistakes. If they’re any that she cannot fix, she will do so well in life that they will never matter again.
But people, cities, things, situations… they all change. These changes deform familiarity and obfuscate lingering memories.
I can feel her scratching the extremities of my body, begging to be let out. I can feel the ghost of her in old playlists which I avoid opening, in notebooks that I try throwing away, in photos when I scroll past too quickly because my smile in them felt like it belonged to someone else.
Nobody really understands how it feels to live in her shadow. She was the all-rounder. She had academics, co-curriculars, extra-curriculars, friends (even if they were fake people who wanted “in”), admiration, popularity, trust, and something most people do not believe — sports.
She was prettier, thinner, had shinier hair, clear skin, whiter teeth; yet she hurt herself worrying about all of this, as if she never had it. I keep thinking that if I could go back in time, I’d reassure her — but if she felt this way about a person I keep on a pedestal now, what would she think about me now that I have absolutely brought myself to ruins.
So one night, tired in a bone deep way that sleep does not fix, I decided to reconstruct her. That is the only word that feels honest. Reconstruct. Re-construct. Like she had shattered quietly over time and I had been walking around with the pieces in my pockets without noticing.
I told myself I was just reminiscing. That I was allowed to be curious about my past. That everybody does this sometimes. But curiosity curdles when you linger too long. Suddenly you are not remembering. You are inventorying. You are counting what you used to have and what you no longer recognise as yours.
I did not expect comfort. I knew there’s no proof that I had grown in obvious, glamorous ways. But I did not expect to keep finding fragments that felt brighter than anything I was holding now.
And the longer I tried to fit those pieces back together, the heavier my chest got. I realised that what I was building did not resemble the person sitting on my bed, surrounded by relics of a version of herself she could no longer reach.
This is the story of that night. And the ones after it. The slow, devastating realisation that I was not looking at a rough draft of myself.
I was looking at someone I would never be again.
We’re not who we used to be
Harry Styles, “Two Ghosts”
We’re just two ghosts standin’ in the place of you and me
Trying to remember how it feels to have a heart beat
I treated my past like a pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
I spread the evidence out the way you do when you are serious about solving something. Old journals and digital notes open in messy stacks. Screenshots of archived conversations and posts. Photos from years ago where my posture is better, my eyes reckless with optimism, my captions embarrassing in the way only fearless people allow themselves to be.
I told myself there had to be a method to the madness. That if I examined her closely enough, I could reverse engineer whatever went wrong. Find the moment the pieces stopped lining up. Trace the crack.
There was a version of me who wrote constantly, not for money or grades or metrics, but because sentences burned holes in her until she let them out. There was a version of me who said yes before she learned how to flinch. A version of me who believed opportunity was abundant, who treated the future like a horizon rather than a courtroom.
I tried to lift those qualities out of memory and place them gently into my present, the way you slot corner pieces into a puzzle first, confident the rest will follow.
They did not.
Every fragment I picked up felt warped by time. Courage from then collided with caution from now. Naivety snagged against experience. The girl who trusted easily refused to live inside a body that has memorised disappointment.
And still I kept trying.
I compared habits. She stayed up all night writing because it felt holy. I stay up all night checking SLCM. She sent reckless voice notes. I rehearse sentences in my head and then decide silence is safer. She flirted with possibility. I negotiate with it.
I wanted to blame something external. A heartbreak. A failure. A specific catastrophe I could point to and say, there, that is where I broke. But nothing dramatic presents itself. Just years. Just accumulation. Just the quiet erosion of being alive in a world that keeps asking for output.
The worst part is how it feels like I misplaced myself somewhere along the way and forgot to double back for her. Like I was handed a bright, reckless future and slowly traded it in for something smaller, dimmer.
I kept rearranging the pieces, convinced I was one insight away from clicking her back into existence.
Instead, the image kept refusing to form.
I kept asking where I went wrong.
Once you start interrogating yourself, it is hard to stop.
I would hold up memory like evidence. Her laughing too loudly at a party. Her submitting work without apologising for it first. Her believing people when they promised things. Her assuming she would be exceptional simply because she wanted to be.
Then I would look at myself now and feel the sting of comparison land somewhere soft.
When did I start shrinking my dreams before anybody else could.
When did I learn to underplay excitement.
When did I become the kind of person who plans for disappointment the way others plan holidays.
I kept circling the same question like it might eventually crack open.
Where did I go wrong.
Was it the first time I failed publicly? The first time something I loved did not love me back? The moment I realised hard work is not always rewarded in neat, cinematic ways? The slow dawning that effort does not guarantee arrival?
There was obviously a turning point, when everything started to go wrong. It was, you probably guessed it, a boy. I blame everything he did, of course I do, but I also realised that the very moment I felt loved enough, I let my world roll right off my shoulders. I finally sat down instead of running in a race with no end. I felt peace in those pieces, no matter how short-lived it was.
Then, I blamed my parents. If feeling loved is where my life started toppling over, why did I not feel loved throughout my life? Conclusion: Someone loving you for 2 years is different than someone loving you for 18. He messed up so much in such a short duration, my parents were there for longer. They didn’t do everything right but they barely went very wrong either. Whatever they did built me more than it ruined me.
After failing to point out reasonable reasons, I realised that it was, indeed, my fault. I am the burnt-out gifted child that never drew boundaries with anyone or anything, who loved with every ounce of my being — I messed up. And I needed someone to pick me up, but no one was there for me like I was for them. Instead of letting me stabilise, everyone pushed me into boxes that I just didn’t fit into. After all, I did gain a lot of weight. Sorry, next point.
I figured that when you excel for so long, people fail to see the human in you at the end of the day. People assume you’re made of steel and will take anything life throws at you. But those same people will also be the first ones to throw comments your way the moment you ask them for any support. Suddenly, they’ll remind you that you’re human, they don’t have skills like you do, they have nothing to say to you, and so much more.
At the end of the day, the ultimate point I resort to, i.e. the truth I tell myself is:
You’re the only one responsible for yourself. You’re the only one who will live with your own successes and failures.
The girl I was did not know about burnout. She did not know about polite rejections or being almost chosen or watching doors close without anyone slamming them dramatically enough for you to protest. She did not know how ambition drains you when you chase it long enough. She did not know how adulthood is less about becoming and more about managing.
And that knowledge has weight.
I carry responsibilities and deadlines and other people’s expectations and my own brutal standards. I carry friendships that require maintenance and dreams that now need budgets and backup plans and emotional insurance policies. Of course I am heavier.
But understanding that does not stop the ache. It does not stop me missing the way she moved through the world with her arms open, convinced something beautiful was always about to happen to her. It does not stop me wondering whether I protected myself so thoroughly that I also protected myself from joy.
I want to forgive myself for surviving things she never had to face.
I also want to scream at the universe for making that survival necessary.
Both things live in me at once, and they argue constantly.
I cannot rebuild her because she no longer exists.
This is the part that hurts the most to admit:
I am not failing at the puzzle. The puzzle is impossible.
You cannot put together a version of yourself that belonged to a different life, a different level of knowing, a different nervous system. You cannot ask a girl who had never been broken to coexist with a woman who has learned how to glue herself back together.
I keep trying to resurrect her anyway. Like if I reread enough journals, if I play the right songs, if I mimic her routines, she will step forward fully formed and take over again.
She does not.
What steps forward is me. With her handwriting in my bones and her bravery diluted into something quieter, something that looks less glamorous but maybe lasts longer.
I do not like this realisation. I want transformation arcs and glow ups and neat narratives where you grow and everything improves in visible, Instagrammable ways. I do not want a story where the cost of staying alive is losing certain versions of yourself forever.
But that is the story I seem to be living.
I am stuck between who I was and who I am becoming, grieving a girl who is technically still me and yet unreachable, like she boarded a train years ago and I only noticed the platform was empty once the sound faded.
I thought adulthood would feel like expansion. Sometimes it feels like archaeology. Like I am constantly brushing dust off old bones and trying to remember how they once moved.
We’re not who we used to be
Harry Styles, “Two Ghosts”
We’re just two ghosts swimmin’ in a glass half empty
Trying to remember how it feels to have a heart beat
I still keep the pieces.
The thing nobody warns you about is that you do not throw your old selves away. You carry them folded into drawers, saved in cloud storage, embedded in muscle memory. They show up when a song wrecks you unexpectedly, when you write something honest and forget to edit it into politeness, when you talk too fast about a new idea and surprise yourself with your own enthusiasm.
She is still here. Just not in the way I want.
I went looking for a resurrection. What I found was inheritance.
It does not satisfy me yet. I am still angry. Still tender. Still convinced that somewhere along the line I took a wrong turn and have been walking parallel to the life I was supposed to live ever since. I still stare at old photos and feel like I am looking at a braver person than the one holding the phone now.
But I am also starting to see something else, even if I do not like it much.
She did not disappear. She changed shape.
And maybe the real grief is not that I cannot become her again. Maybe it is accepting that the person I am now is what happened to her after the world touched her, after love bruised her, after time sped up, after survival became a skill.
I wanted to rebuild my old self.
Instead, I am standing inside the woman she grew into, holding her fragments, aching for the simplicity of who she once was, and learning, slowly and unwillingly, that some versions of you are meant to be lived only once.
And that missing them is part of the price of continuing anyway.
If you’ve ever felt lost within yourself, discover more stories on Her Campus at MUJ. And for a tour in my past, present, and future — visit Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ.