i already lived them
on realizing the “best days” of my life are behind me…sort of
there aren’t many people who have a photograph of themselves at their peak.
not a curated one.
not a milestone.
not a version that survived because it fit into a narrative.
i mean a real one.
the kind where your body isn’t braced for impact.
where your smile isn’t performing hope.
where you look like someone who still believes the future is leaning toward her.
i have one from a dinner with new friends right after i moved to dc.
i’m laughing. really laughing.
my shoulders are loose. my eyes are bright.
i look like a woman who thinks she’s just getting started.
that night, my phone buzzed with a notification from find my friends:
“[redacted] requested a notification when you leave this location.”
i remember smiling at the screen.
i thought it was sweet.
i thought it meant i was loved.
that people were waiting for me.
that i mattered enough to be tracked, enough to be worried about.
i didn’t know yet how wrong i was.
i pulled into the driveway of a dark house.
the kind of dark that isn’t peaceful—just vacant. withholding.
as i walked to my room, i heard laughter from another part of the house.
voices i recognized. voices that belonged to people i thought were mine.
as i lay in bed, shoes still on, the joy from dinner still buzzing in my chest, i heard someone say:
“whew. we just made it. she walked in just as i ran upstairs.”
they wanted the notification so they could hide.
so they wouldn’t have to see me.
so my presence wouldn’t interrupt whatever version of the evening they wanted to have without me.
that was the moment something in me cracked.
not loudly.
not dramatically.
just a quiet, internal recalibration where my body realized before my mind could catch up:
you are not as wanted as you thought.
everything after that feels both slow and violent when i look back.
the loss of community didn’t happen all at once.
it thinned. it frayed. it stopped returning my calls.
my confidence didn’t shatter—it eroded.
each small dismissal sanding me down until i couldn’t remember what i used to sound like when i spoke without apology.
the belief that i was worthy of love didn’t disappear overnight.
it was replaced, inch by inch, with the fear that i was a burden people tolerated until they didn’t have to anymore.
and then the other losses arrived.
chronic illness.
disability.
poverty.
abuse.
stacked so tightly together there was no room to process one before the next slammed in.
i was always bracing.
always surviving.
always telling myself just get through this part.
when i finally emerged, i wasn’t stronger.
i was stripped.
healing didn’t feel like rebuilding.
it felt like taking inventory in a burned-down house.
and the thing i wasn’t prepared to mourn—the thing no one warns you about—was this:
the life i dreamed of didn’t just change.
it ended.
i used to believe my best days were ahead of me.
i planned my life like a runway—long, open, leading somewhere bright.
and now, at thirty-one, i’m staring at the fact that the days i felt most alive, most capable, most myself already happened.
not because i peaked.
but because the version of me who could sustain that life didn’t survive what came next.
i’m still ambitious.
my mind is sharp. strategic. alive with ideas.
but my body collapses after an hour or two like it’s pulling an emergency brake.
sleep isn’t rest—it’s survival.
i still want love. deeply. viscerally.
but my nervous system is so wrecked i don’t trust my own judgment, let alone someone else’s promises.
forever feels less romantic and more like a threat i don’t know how to evaluate.
my dream of a cute apartment in a walkable city didn’t evolve.
it didn’t transform into something wiser.
it lies deflated on the streets of dc.
on sidewalks where i wandered alone, replaying conversations, wondering why connection seemed effortless for everyone else.
wondering what invisible thing made people step around me instead of toward me.
i know the language people want me to use.
redirection.
reinvention.
new chapters.
i know i’m “still young.”
i know thirty-one is supposed to be spacious, not final.
i know there is still time for healing and work and meaning and joy.
i don’t reject any of that.
but here’s the truth i keep circling:
none of the future gets to exist if i don’t first stop gripping the past with bloody hands.
i have spent years ripping myself to shreds trying to keep that life.
trying to resurrect the girl who could live it.
trying to force my body, my heart, my mind back into a shape they no longer recognize.
this—right now—this is the letting go.
it feels like prying my own fingers open.
each joint creaking. aching. resisting.
it is terrifying to admit that maybe that season was as good as it gets.
not because it was perfect—but because it was the last time i had the capacity to sustain it.
and in losing it, i didn’t just lose a life.
i lost the version of me who knew how to build it.
this isn’t redirection.
it isn’t rebuilding.
it’s standing in the middle of the wreckage and realizing you don’t have anything left to give it.
even the parts you loved.
especially the parts you loved.
and walking away anyway.
maybe this is what eulogizing a life actually looks like.
not rewriting it.
not redeeming it.
just standing still long enough to name what it was and who i was inside it.
maybe in telling the truth about what died, i make room for something that isn’t born out of desperation or comparison or proof.
not yet.
not soon.
but eventually.
after the ache of release dulls from a knife to a bruise.
after my hands remember what it feels like to rest instead of grip.
maybe something quieter can grow here.
something smaller. truer.
something that doesn’t ask me to become who i was again—
just who i am now.