Letting Go of Who I Was To Become Who I Am

In the vision, I am no more than 10 years old, body curled around clasped hands like a crescent moon, wishing. I’m held by the chorus of my childhood: the old fan wheezing sputtered breath, the chatter of Mom’s television leaking in through the corridor, the shhh of my feet rubbing against the covers, pressed together so tight you’d think there’s magic in their friction. My solo is a whisper to a ceiling full of glow stars, the most faithful audience I could ever ask for when dreaming into the dark. I will be great. I will be something special.

Every time I’ve felt stalled out at the intersection of Who I Am, Who I Was, and Who I Want To Be since graduating from Smith, I’ve reached for memories like this one with palms upward. I’d go back in time in the sharp inhale before explaining Where I See Myself in Five Years on a stuffy Zoom job interview. I’d hide there for hours after scrolling through LinkedIn or Instagram, anxious from staring at perfect lives led in 2D. I’d search for answers, direction, hope—for that Thing that made me, me. I’d disappear into the past every night spent sleeping in the same room in the same house in the same town as when I was a child—hoping that if I just wished hard enough, all the sounds would carry me home to myself.

During this uncertain period of transition, my strategy had been to build a map to Who I Want To Be from Who I Was. I figured if I scoured through enough old journals for clues, borrowed enough answers, and picked up my old stories where I left off, I could reconstruct this fuller version of myself—the one I lost sometime in my early teens. From that point forward my expectations, originally sources of hope and inspiration, began to bite at me for all my shortcomings. They let up only when I achieved something tangible, something I could hold and show off as proof of my value. School and relationships became sources of consistent validation for me, so I got my purpose from them and almost nothing else. In my internal history book, that’s when the hardening happened—when Who I Am withered and paled and the memory of Who I Was began to shimmer in comparison.

When I first graduated, I made plans I thought might guide me back to this previous version of myself. I researched graduate schools and began filling out applications. Returned to the idea of a novel I always dreamed would be published one day. Consulted loved ones about decisions large and small, finding comfort in their guidance. Started working an administrative job to build savings. Each plan had seeds of the life I envisioned for myself as a child, and to plant them would mean I was on the right path. I’ll get my M.F.A.! I’ll write so many books that I’ll have a whole section in the store! I’ll make my people proud! Sometimes at night, I’d swear I could hear my own whisper woven into the hum of my fan—so subtle I could miss it with even the slightest movement. I always reached for myself backward in this way. I was desperate for more than just a glimpse of Who I Was so I could feel like less of a stranger in my childhood bedroom.

For more than a year I closed my eyes and waited for my plans to bear fruit—and maybe they would have if I’d committed to watering them sufficiently. Instead, I never completed any graduate school applications because I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to study screenwriting or creative writing. I couldn’t continue the novel I started in childhood because I no longer found joy in writing it, and that saddened me too much. I struggled to maintain authentic relationships because my fear of rejection led me to contort myself to remain likable at all costs. I was adrift. The graduate school deadlines passed. The words never came for the novel. Sensing my disingenuity, people I cared about exited my life. I settled into the administrative job and called myself names other than my own. I prepared to give up the search for myself, having looked for her everywhere but in the mirror.

It’s hard to explain how it felt to watch my plans turn to ash right in front of me. There was, of course, embarrassment and anger at myself for giving up. The agony of knowing I might never become what I’d hoped I’d be as a child. The anguish of never regaining access to the previous version of myself. And the panic that without her, I might never meet myself again. But underneath it all was a quieter, more honest emotion. It pushed through the spaces between my ribs and grew louder over time until it woke me from sleep, spilling out in those first few hours of the morning when it’s too early not to tell the truth:

Relief.

Because I don’t know if I want any of those things anymore.

I’d like to say that the sound of my own voice was enough to free me, but constructing a version of the past because it’s what I want to remember has never served me. I know that now. So, I will lay myself bare and confess that I did not let go willingly. Maybe it was astrological timing or frontal lobe development or the return of the sun after a long, dreary winter, but holding on to Who I Was had long burned my hands, and one day last summer I just got tired of being in pain. Tired of upholding an illusory perception of my past self, a dramatization of the truth that I used as a coping mechanism against the daunting task of growing up. It’s taxing to stay hidden from yourself. As soon as I experimented with putting my energy into trusting myself and my intuition—I quit my administrative job, dared to show strangers my writing, and centered my relationship with myself rather than with others—something inside of me opened its arms a little wider in greeting.

I currently have no plans to go to graduate school. I’m developing a new story idea, and I haven’t decided if it’s a film or a show or a novel or a play or a short story. Maybe it’s all five. I work two jobs in the educational documentary world—a space I didn’t think I’d end up in but am finding rewarding. I undress all expectations, and in their nakedness I investigate where or who they’ve come from. Once I’ve figured that out, I invite them to evolve. I still sleep in the same room in the same house in the same town as when I was a child. I’m grateful for it. I design my life every single day, and I know now to do it in pencil so that I can preserve Who I Was without sacrificing Who I Am at the altar of Who I Will Be. They are all me, and they are all proud.

Should I ever feel the urge to reach back to this moment in a future period of uncertainty, I wish to place this brief soliloquy in the palms of my hands: It is only when we ground ourselves in the soft flesh of our present body that we can find romance in the lifelong process of Becoming. To dream freely and forever is to play in the muddy mess of change and still see your own face clearly. Glow stars or not, in youth or in seasoned wisdom, the answer is not behind but within. You know what you’re made of. You always have.

Kayara Akiva is the pen name of Kayara Hardnett-Barnes ’23. She majored in film and media studies and sociology at Smith and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.