The People We Miss The Most Are Often Versions Of Ourselves

Julie Akacha

5 hours ago

5 min read

There's this quote you see everywhere: “You don't miss the person. You miss the version of them that you knew.” I think most of us read that and immediately think, Yeah... that's exactly it.

But the other night, I started wondering if we've been looking at it from the wrong angle.

What if the people we miss the most are actually mirrors? What if, behind them, the person we're desperately trying to get back... is ourselves? Because the truth is, people never change alone. Every relationship belongs to a certain chapter of our lives. You know... your high school best friend, your first love, that summer, those three-hour phone calls under the blanket, the random coffees between classes...

We think it's the people we miss, but really, they were just there during a version of ourselves that doesn't exist anymore. When I think about some people today, I realize I probably wouldn't even want to meet the person they've become. Our lives have gone in completely different directions; we probably wouldn't even know what to talk about anymore.

And yet… Sometimes I miss them so much.

Why? Because they remind me of the girl I was when they were a part of my life.

She was laughing at different things, she was scared of different things, she had different goals, different expectations of people, and different values. She accepted things that she would never accept today.

It's not that she was better; she was just different. You were different. You are different. That's where nostalgia becomes a little misleading. Our brain doesn't store memories like files on a computer. It connects them to emotions, smells, songs, places, people… So when someone randomly pops back into our mind, they also unlock the version of ourselves that existed back then.

It's almost like time travel. The only problem is that we confuse the trip with the tour guide. We think we're trying to get the person back, when really we're trying to get back what they brought out in us. How carefree we felt, how much we trusted, how light everything seemed, how effortless life felt when they were around… And sometimes there's something even harder to admit.

It feels like they left and took that version of us with them.

I think this is especially true after heartbreak. We don't resent the ex because they left. We resent them because before them, trusting people came naturally. Before them, we weren't rereading every text three times before hitting send, we weren't overthinking every silence or assuming it meant someone was losing interest. It's almost like when they closed the door on the relationship, they also closed the door on who we used to be. Eventually, we start telling ourselves, “ I was so much more myself before.“

But... was it really them who changed you? Or is your brain trying to find someone to blame for something that's actually much more complicated? Major life events, like a breakup, losing someone, or being betrayed… temporarily change the way we see the world because our brain's first job is to protect us. If someone hurts us, our brain turns up our awareness. It teaches us to notice warning signs faster, to think twice, to trust a little less. That's survival, this is SO NOT a life sentence. The problem is that while we're still in that stage, it feels permanent.

We tell ourselves, “I'll never be that spontaneous again. I'll never fall in love the same way again. I'll never trust people like I used to." When really, our brain is doing what it always does after an injury: it puts the armor on before it takes the stitches out. And armors have a funny way of making you feel like you've become someone else. The truth is, our identity is never built alone. It's shaped by the people around us. We're slightly different with our parents than we are with our best friend, different with our coworkers than with our partner. Every person brings out different parts of who we are. But they don't own those parts; that's a really important difference.

Your ex didn't take away the happy version of you; they were simply the person around whom that version of you felt safe enough to exist every day. That's not the same thing. Because if that version of you existed once… it came from you. Not from them.

No one can walk away with something they never created.

Maybe they helped create the environment where that version of you could grow, but the roots were always yours. I think we spend way too much time trying to become our old selves again. Like healing means becoming the exact person we were before we got hurt. But honestly… that would almost be unfair to ourselves. Healing has never meant going backwards; healing means learning to trust again without becoming naive again. It means learning to love again without forgetting what life taught you. It means finding joy again without pretending the pain never happened.

Healing isn't about becoming your old self, it's about becoming someone who still feels like you... but knows how to protect herself without shutting herself off from life.

We never actually lose the different versions of ourselves; we just stop giving them space for a while. Until one day, a new person, a new city, a new dream or even just an ordinary Tuesday morning makes us laugh exactly the way it used to. And suddenly, that person wasn't carrying that part of us. They were simply the first place where it felt at home.

But YOU are HOME.

That's why we're sometimes disappointed when we meet someone again years later. Without realizing it, we expect to feel the same. But one essential ingredient is missing: us. Because yes, they've changed, but so have you. We forget that the chemistry between two people never depends only on the people themselves. It also depends on when they met. You can genuinely love someone at twenty… and have no idea what to say to them at twenty-five. That doesn't mean the love wasn't real; it means the two people who created that connection don't exist anymore.

There's something a little heartbreaking about growing up. We spend so much time trying to find old versions of ourselves again, like the spontaneous high school version, the one who couldn't stop drawing, the one who played sports every weekend…

It's almost like growing up feels like losing little pieces of yourself. But are we really losing them? Or are we romanticizing a time when we didn't know how the story would unfold?

I often think about Joan Didion's quote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live." I think we also tell ourselves stories in order to survive nostalgia. We convince ourselves that life was better, that that relationship was one of a kind, that that chapter will never come back. When what we actually miss is really what it felt like to be that person.

The good news is that none of our old selves ever truly disappear. They just evolve! The girl who used to laugh until two in the morning still exists somewhere. So yeah, maybe she laughs less often now. But when she does, doesn’t she mean it more? The version of us who believed everyone would stay still exists too; we just learned that some people are only meant to stay for one chapter.

And that's not a tragedy. That's how life works. The real grief isn't losing people, it's saying goodbye to old versions of ourselves without even realizing we're doing it.

So, the next time you find yourself missing someone, instead of asking, “Why am I still thinking about them?”, ask yourself something else.

"Which version of me is knocking on the door?"

Because in the end, the people we miss the most are often the ones who knew versions of us that nobody else ever will. Again, they don't own those versions. They were just lucky enough to witness them. And maybe there's nothing stranger than feeling nostalgic for someone who happens to have your own name.