WRITING TO THE GIRL : I USED TO BE
Dear girl i used to be,
I wonder whether you would recognize me.
Perhaps you would. Perhaps that is the cruelest part.
You would recognize my face, certainly. You would see the familiar expressions and mistake them for familiarity. You would recognize the smile—the one you learned to use whenever a question came too close to something you didn’t want to explain. You would recognize the pauses, too; those brief moments in which I search for an acceptable answer before giving one — the small, almost invisible hesitation where I decide how much of myself is safe to reveal and how much should remain hidden.
Funny—you wanted to be understood. I learned how not to be.
You would recognize my habit of saying, “I’m fine” But you might not recognize what it means anymore.
I used to say it hoping someone would see through it. Now I say it because I don’t want them to.
If you met me now, you’d ask when I changed. I’d ask you ask when you became desperate to be understood.
That’s the argument we never finished.
You say I became distant. I say you became too trusting.
You wanted to be understood. I learned to be unreadable.
Silence, for you, meant loneliness. For me, it became protection.
And I no longer know which of us is real.
You see what I lost. I see what I survived.
Neither of us admits we might both be right.
And maybe I just got better at hiding what you were brave enough to feel.
Sometimes I wonder if you’d even like me now, or if you’d look at me and see a stranger wearing your name too comfortably.
I am not troubled by the fact that I have changed, but by the realization that I have learned to conceal whatever has become inconvenient.
I once believed that growing older meant gaining a clearer understanding of oneself. Now I think it means becoming adept at looking back without recognizing the person reflected there.
At times, I almost convince myself that I have outgrown you.
Then an old song, a photograph, something insignificant—and suddenly you are there again.
Not gone.
Just buried deep enough to mistake silence for disappearance.
You regard me as though I have betrayed you.
Perhaps I have.
You sought gentleness; I learned restraint. You sought understanding; I learned not to depend on it. You asked for explanations; I learned that some answers come at a cost greater than silence.
Get ARPITA NATH’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I cannot say when you disappeared.
There was no clear moment, only fragments—some taken, some surrendered, others buried until forgetting felt like healing.
And I am not entirely sorry.
That is the hardest truth.
There is a certain comfort in being unreadable. If no one can reach you, nothing can be used against you. However, this form of protection is not without consequence.
Remain hidden long enough, and even those who remain will no longer be able to find you.
I constructed the door and convinced myself there was nothing worth opening it for.
I do not know what to do with who I once was; I may not recognize you if you returned.
Yet I suspect you never truly left—I buried you in silence.
You remain present in my hesitation, in the silence I preserve, and in every sentence I abandon before it becomes a confession.
At times, I consider that you may be the only part of me that still seeks to be understood.
And I resent you for that.
To desire understanding is to acknowledge that something within me is still worthy of being reached.
I do not know whether I could become you again. Perhaps I do not wish to. Too much of you had to disappear for me to become this version of myself.
Tonight, I leave the door unlocked.
Not as invitation, not expecting your return.
But because I wonder what happens when a buried part of you may still be alive.
Not as an invitation, nor in expectation of your return.
But because I wonder what may occur when a buried part of oneself is not entirely gone.
