I didn’t meet myself
until I lost the first version of me.
I must’ve been thirteen,
or fourteen?

It was a summer night.
I was getting ready for bed,
staring at the mirror
in my white nightdress.

I felt a gnawing absence
before I could name it.
Like something sacred had come undone –
I was already in mourning.

I didn’t recognize myself for days.
Then fear followed —
The fear of vanishing
from my own memory.

My identity had thrived
in perfect grades, polite silences,
and the way teachers said my name.

Who was I
if not a model child?

I couldn’t answer.
So I decided:
I was worth nothing.
And then time erased her.

Fifteen years later,
I met myself again.
Not in a mirror
but in a refusal.

I had stopped pleasing.
Stopped apologizing
for needing less applause.
This time, the absence felt like a rebirth.

I felt weightless.
Only then did I realize
how long I had carried
what was never mine to bear.

This goodbye
came as a relief.
But I suspect
I’ll meet myself one last time –

when the girl I lost
knows I made it back.
And maybe then,
I’ll be whole enough
to lose it all again.