Oh, so this is me now

On being astonished by who we’re still becoming, and grateful for who we’ve been

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People you’ve known for a while—the ones you speak to only sometimes but always easily—become quiet mirrors. You catch up after months, and in their eyes, you see how far you’ve drifted from who you once were.

Recently, after weeks of trying, I finally spoke to an old friend. We talked for two hours. It was warm, unhurried—one of those conversations that reminds you time doesn’t dilute some connections, it just gives them new context.

I told him about a playlist I’d made this year with someone I dated. How the contrast was almost comical—he added all these American songs, and I… added Punjabi ones.

My friend laughed, surprised. Proud, even. Because anyone who knew me before 2024 would never have guessed it.

Back then, I was the girl who only listened to Korean indie, and before that, American pop. Someone who couldn’t ever quite imagine vibing to Hindi or Punjabi music. And yet, those who meet me now, think I have only ever loved Punjabi music.

What’s endearing is that I don’t feel the need to correct them or context-provide. But it wasn’t always this way.

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In my early twenties, I seemed to carry this stubborn loyalty to my past selves.

If someone asked, “What’s your music taste?” or “Do you drink?”, I couldn’t just give a simple answer. I felt this deep need to explain the full context, and I’d end up giving a TED talk: Here’s the timeline, the evolution, the exceptions, the academic references, and—for legal reasons—the emotional disclaimers.

I didn’t know how to just… be. I carried every outdated version of myself into every fresh conversation like an unsolicited appendix. If I didn’t, it felt dishonest, as if I were erasing something.

But something has eased in me recently.

Now when people meet me, they don’t need the whole museum tour: the girl who waited eleven years for her first tattoo, the economics nerd with a 100/100 in 12th boards, the accounting major who thought debit and credit were her destiny.

They can just know me as I am: a writer, a poet, a woman who pays CA firms specifically so she does not have to do even look at the ITR website.

And this gentle acceptance of the present has also untangled a much messier ache—the one I used to feel about other people’s pasts.

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When I’d meet someone in their late twenties or early thirties, I’d feel this weird, physical ache—like a tiny fist pressing under my ribs—realising I’d never know who they were when they were soft and embarrassing and still figuring out the ways in which their parents messed them up.

I wanted everything: their terrible school handwriting, their first heartbreak playlist,
the stupid thing they did at nineteen that changed their life and cost them ₹10,000 and a friendship.

I mourned the years of them I would never get. Loving someone without their backstory felt like starting a book from Chapter 11. And I’m sorry, but I’m a nerd even when loving people and I want the footnotes, the prologue, the deleted scenes. I want the child and the teenager and the early adult, all of them.

I thought missing their “before” meant I’d never fully hold their “now.” As if to love someone, I needed the blueprint to all their past breaths.

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So when I dated someone who went from training to be a priest to Goa beach-boy reinvention, I needed the lore: the years in the seminary, the crisis of faith, the dramatic exit, the spiritual hangover.

So one night, we did the full emotional tapas spread: wine, cheese garlic naan, Korean chili oil, candles—basically the kind of set-up that whispers, “tell me your… damage.”

And he did. And I am glad.

But somewhere between his softening voice and my slowly drooping eyelids, a revelation tapped me on the shoulder like: hey babe, you don’t actually need all of this.

Not because I didn’t care. But because I realised I was already falling for the man sitting across from me and did not need his entire historical archive.

Here’s the thing right: closeness will reveal people anyway. Not in one dramatic night with wine and existential naan, but slowly, the way waves deposit shells. A story here, a wound there, a joke, a memory, a confession at 2 a.m.

You get it all, eventually, if the two of you are important enough to stay in each other’s lives. Just not as an onboarding presentation.

And turns out, love doesn’t demand the entire audit of someone’s emotional history; just presence. Maybe even curiosity. And the permission to let all your previous selves rest.

Because everyone we meet carries an invisible biography; a thousand selves layered under the skin. And what a privilege—honestly—to meet them here: at the exact point where all those versions collapse into this one.

This version that chose to meet mine. Fragile. Divine. Human in all the right, painful, ridiculous ways.

And now that I know this, I’m finally learning to live the same way. To stop narrating my entire past like a Wikipedia timeline every time I meet someone new.

To exist in motion. Unashamed.

Which brings me to the funniest part of becoming older: I keep surprising myself in ways that earlier me would have screamed about.

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I mean, you’d think by 28, most big identity plot twists would be done. But no. Life walks in like, “Babe, try this.”

I used to think books were the only thing that would keep me awake past midnight. But now? Now I’m up at 2 a.m. watching football, stalking injury updates, and forming extremely serious opinions on players I didn’t even know existed last quarter.

Past me would’ve laughed. Or checked my temperature.

And yet here I am—annoyingly invested, alarmingly informed, sending voice notes with opinions even I didn’t know I had.

It’s ridiculous. It’s fun. It makes me feel oddly cool, like I’ve unlocked a chaotic alternate universe where I know what a set piece is and mutter things like, “Raya, please,” and “Rice cannot be the entire midfield forever,” as if Arteta might personally hear me.

And honestly? I love it for me.

It feels like a blessing, this capacity to be rearranged so late in the game. I once feared running out of newness—that all the firsts belonged to my younger selves. But here I am, finding tenderness in unexpected corners, discovering new enthusiasms, surprising myself with what I can love.

Maybe that’s all it is, after all: learning to remain porous, to let life keep finding new ways in. To stay a little unfinished. To have the courage to let play and wonder take your hand and lead you toward things you’d once overlook, to say yes to what you’d never have considered before.

And then, on some quiet evening, to find yourself pausing—caught between awe and recognition—thinking with a kind of soft disbelief: Oh, so this is me now.

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Every version of me has walked part of the way—some steady, some uncertain, all of them necessary. Every version of me has left behind a trace—a laugh, a line, a lesson. Each one proof that I kept saying yes to life.

I’ll always honour them—the girls and women I’ve been, each one convinced she was the final draft. But I know better now. I know I’ll keep being rewritten, by tenderness, by chance, by time.

Just as I hope to keep the door open for the ones I haven’t met yet, the ones already gathering quietly somewhere ahead, waiting for their turn to live through me.

So if this essay is anything, it’s a thank you to all the girls I’ve been—and a slightly dramatic, borderline flirty hello to the ones I’m becoming.

And you? Who are you now—the version your past selves would never, ever have predicted?