I sometimes feel like I lost a part of myself along the way, like something got left behind in this crazy journey called life.
The others tell me it’s normal. It’s just part of growing up. “I don’t know, Liz. Maybe you’re having a quarter-life crisis,” Kat was bold enough to say at one point. She’s always been good at being blunt like that. She’d call it being pragmatic, but that’s debatable.
The perfect version of myself would probably agree with Kat. But then, I’ve never been perfect. I’m perfectly misaligned, if anything. I never know what color I want my hair to be, I got B’s at best in college before I dropped out, and I’m the actual worst at picking where we should go to get food.
That perfect version of Liz Lenhardt lives in my memory fiction, that place where my wildest dreams can come true and everything is right with the world. Her makeup is always perfect, she has an annoying pep in her step, and that smile on her face is downright infectious.
Maybe that’s what I’m missing—the thing that got left behind. It’s that version of myself I never got to be. I’m holding onto this false perception of who I’m supposed to be. But that’s just not who I am. Life made me, well, me.
So…do I just let her go?
Am I allowed to grieve for a person who never even existed?
For the sake of my sanity, I’m going with yes.