«We don’t always find ourselves where we got lost. Often, we believe we no longer exist the way we once did…»

I came back to the place where I once felt whole. Where I laughed without hearing my echo and wasn’t afraid of silence. Where I loved and allowed myself to be loved—without calculations, without walls. I thought I would find myself again among the same streets, the same cold coffees, the same pages of the journal I never finished.

But I didn’t find myself anymore.

I walked into the old bookstore and let my fingers glide over familiar spines. The books were still there. I wasn’t. I told myself, “Maybe the city has changed.” But no, the city was the same. It was my eyes that had changed.

The woman I once was has melted away in so many choices, in dozens of small battles, in a few big surrenders, and in nights when I stayed silent instead of asking. In the meantime, I’ve learned to be alone without feeling abandoned. To stop confusing silence with emptiness.

I lost her—the one who dreamed without fear and loved without limits. But maybe I didn’t lose her. Maybe she transformed. Maybe she retreated somewhere inside me, in a warm, quiet corner, where she waits for me when I remember to breathe deeply.

I didn’t find myself in the past, but I did find myself in today’s mirror. In the woman who no longer runs from pain, but listens to it. Who no longer asks for permission to be herself. Who finally understood that you don’t find yourself in the place where you fell, but in the place where you chose, for the first time, to rise on your own.

Sometimes, we search for ourselves in vain through memories. The truth is, we are no longer the same. And it’s a good thing we’re not. Because life doesn’t ask us to be the same women—it asks us to be true in every new version of ourselves.

So, if you once got lost, don’t go back to search for yourself. Look at who you’ve become in the meantime. And embrace her.