I Miss the Old Me ...

I miss the old me.

I miss her capacity. Her spontaneity. The whirlwind. The version of me who could say yes without first calculating the cost.

But I also understand her differently now — the adrenaline, the overriding, the overwhelm, and the crashes that I didn’t yet have language for.

In this Autistic Musing, I’m sitting with one of the contradictions of late identification: grieving parts of who I used to be while also loving the slower, quieter, more truthful life I have now.

Maybe I don’t want the old me back. But I do miss her. And perhaps both can be true.