By Sanjukta Das
I searched for myself in crowded rooms,
in borrowed dreams and borrowed truths,
in every yes I gave away,
in every word I didn’t say.
I wore my strength like armour,
and called my silence grace,
I learned to leave my own heart waiting,
while taking care of every place.
Then came a quiet morning,
when nothing had gone wrong,
and yet I knew, with sudden clarity,
I had been missing for too long.
So I gathered up the pieces
I had scattered everywhere,
the woman I had silenced,
the dreams I couldn’t spare.
I did not become somebody new.
I simply turned around—
and found the woman I had been
still waiting to be found.
August 22, 202
What Losing Myself Taught Me About Coming Home
Sometimes the hardest journey is not becoming someone new. It is finding the woman you were before the world taught you to disappear.
The Story Behind These Words
I wrote this for the woman who looks in the mirror and wonders when did she become a stranger to herself.
For the woman who became dependable before she learned to become honest with herself.
For the woman who kept giving because giving felt safer than asking.
For the woman who learned how to survive disappointment, absorb silence, carry responsibility and keep moving—while quietly losing pieces of herself along the way.
For years, I believed that finding yourself was something dramatic. I imagined transformation as a grand decision, a brave departure, a completely new beginning.
I know better now.
Sometimes coming back to yourself is almost invisible.
It is saying no without writing an explanation afterwards.
It is resting without feeling guilty.
It is choosing the life that feels right instead of the life that looks right.
It is allowing yourself to disappoint people who were comfortable with your constant accommodation.
It is listening to the small voice inside you that you silenced for years because everyone else’s voice seemed louder.
And sometimes, it is simply sitting quietly one evening and realising:
I miss me.
That sentence can break your heart. It can also begin putting it back together.
There are losses no one knows how to name.
Not the kind that arrive with funerals, closed doors or goodbyes. The quieter ones. The ones that happen while you are still smiling, still answering calls, still showing up, still being everything everyone expects you to be.
You can lose pieces of yourself without anyone noticing.
I know.
There was a time when I became so good at holding everything together that I forgot to ask myself what was falling apart.
I mistook endurance for strength.
I thought being strong meant carrying more, asking for less, forgiving quickly, remaining composed, and never allowing the cracks to show. I became fluent in the language of I’m fine.
Until one day, I realised I had spent so much time being there for everyone else that I could no longer remember what it felt like to be there for myself.
That realisation hurt more than any goodbye.
Because sometimes the person you have to grieve is the version of yourself you abandoned while trying to survive.
And yet, somewhere inside that grief, something began to change.
I stopped asking, Who do I need to become?
I began asking,
Who was I before I started becoming what everyone else needed?
That question brought me home.
Thank you for reading.
If these words found you at a tender place, I hope you carry one thought with you:
You are not always becoming someone new.
Sometimes, you are finally becoming yourself.
