I recently had the opportunity to perform a spoken word poem that I had written a while ago. And on the day of the performance, I remember staring at the words on the pages that I was holding and realizing that these phrases that once held so much emotion and meaning to me no longer seemed relevant to my life.

In fact, when I had written this poem, I had written it for myself; however, as I read through the heartfelt lines, I realized that the “me” who I had written this piece for now seemed quite foreign to the “me” who was about to perform it. In many ways, it felt like someone had pulled out a photo from some old yearbook, and I cringed at seeing a picture I had long since forgotten and perhaps even blocked from my memory.

In a moment of confusion and exasperation, I told my friend, this just isn’t me