I lost touch with most of my childhood friends and grieved that loss until I realized I was mourning who I was, not who they are - Silicon Canals

"I don't really talk to three of these guys anymore. The fourth lives three states away and we text once a year. I hadn't thought about this as a loss until recently. I'd just thought of it as natural drift. People grow up, move away, get married, have kids, build their lives in different directions. It happens to everyone. But the way I was thinking about it was starting to feel like a lie I was telling myself."

"I started really thinking about this after my therapist pointed out that when I talked about these lost friendships, I was always talking about them in the past tense. Not just in terms of the friendship, but in terms of myself. "I used to be the kind of person who had these intense friendships." "I used to be able to just hang out and not worry about anything." "I used to know people who knew me really well.""

An old photograph triggers reflection on friendships that have faded and on the self that existed during those relationships. The narrator realizes the feeling is grief directed less at lost companions and more at the loss of an earlier identity. A therapist notices that memories are spoken of in the past tense, revealing a sense of rupture in self-continuity. Continuity theory and nostalgia suggest that longing often signals a desire for a coherent narrative connecting past and present selves. When continuity breaks, the present self can feel disconnected from former qualities, routines, and social ties.

Read at Silicon Canals