The Version Of Me I Keep Introducing Myself To

 Lately I've been thinking about introductions. 

Not the kind where you shake someone's hand and awkwardly say your name. The quieter kind. The one we make every morning when we decide who we're going to be on that day.  

Some days, I introduce myself as the girl who finally is getting her life all together. Other days, I'm still the girl who overthinks every decisions she makes. Changes her mind three times before leaving the house, before she sends a text, and wonders if everyone has a map she has yet to be be given.

It's funny how we're all expected to know exactly who we are while still busy becoming someone we've never met.  

Maybe that's why growing up feels so confusing. We spent so much time chasing a future version of ourselves that we forget she's being built in the smallest moments of life. In the playlist we can't stop putting on replay.  In the conversations that change us without warnings.  In the mornings when we choose to get up anyways. In the nights when we stay awake wondering if we're falling behind.

I used to think becoming someone happened all at once. Like there would be a magical day when I'd wake up completely certain, completely confident, completely finished. 

But maybe that's not how it works.

Maybe becoming it is just quieter than that.  

Maybe it's realizing your old dreams just don't fit anymore. Maybe it's outgrowing people you once couldn't imagine living without. Maybe it's laughing at the things that used to make you cry. Maybe it's learning that healing rarely announces itself it just it just quietly moves in until one day you realize that the thing that used to hurt .... doesn't

I look at the old pictures of myself sometimes and feel like I'm looking at a stranger. She wore the same smile, but carried way different worries. She believed different things. She was trying her best with the versions of life that she understood.  

And somehow, I think she'd be proud of who I'm becoming even though i don't have all of the answers.  

We're not supposed to have ourselves all figured out by eighteen, twenty- six, or even forty. We're supposed to keep introducing ourselves to new versions of who we are. Some will stay. Some will just leave quietly. Every single one will teach us something.

So I've stopped waiting to become "finished". 

Instead, I'm trying to enjoy meeting the person I'm becoming. 

Because maybe life isn't about finding yourself. 

Maybe it's about having the courage to keep saying" Hi, nice to meet me" every time you feel like you grew into someone new. 

And that makes me wonder.... What if the most important person we'll ever be introduced to is the version of ourselves were becoming all along?