Found in my drafts, September 2026
Originally written January 8th, 2025
I found this entry sitting in my drafts recently, dated January 8th, 2025. It had been there for more than a year, unfinished and unpublished, buried among other things I apparently once intended to come back to.
Reading it again felt oddly intimate. I remembered the aching arm, the gray January afternoon, and especially the conversation with Molly. Around that time, I had already written quite a lot about feeling lost and trying to adjust to a life that still felt unfamiliar, so perhaps I thought this entry had nothing new to say.
A year later, I think I was wrong. What stayed with me was not the loneliness or the adjustment, but the strange experience of having someone who had known me for years notice a change in me before I could see it myself.
So I decided to leave most of it as I wrote it then.
January 8th, 2025
The morning began with the faintest trace of hope. My arm was slightly better. I still could not fully raise it, but I could manage a few cautious movements upward. The pain, however, had other plans. It had crept into my neck and settled there, stubborn and relentless, eventually sending waves of discomfort all the way to my head.
By mid-morning, I decided to stay home. The thought of navigating the U-Bahn, the office, and everything the day demanded felt impossible. My desk was already waiting for me, piled with unfinished evaluation forms, an early reference check, and a string of candidate interviews that needed my attention. The quieter confines of home seemed like the only place where I could begin to catch up.
I sat by the window for a moment before starting work. Outside, the January light was pale and soft, filtering through a gray sky that felt heavy enough to touch. A few stubborn patches of snow clung to the edges of rooftops and sidewalks, their once bright whiteness dulled to gray. The world looked tired, and I felt the same.
It was not an extraordinary day, but there was a moment from the night before that stayed with me.
Molly had messaged me on WhatsApp.
Molly is not just a friend from university. She is someone who has known me long enough to remember versions of me I probably no longer remember clearly myself. We had been chatting more often lately, slipping back into the kind of rhythm that feels easy and familiar, even after long silences.
In the middle of our conversation, she said something that stopped me.
“I don’t know why, but it feels like the ‘real you’ is back. Thank you for that.”
I stared at the message for a while.
The real me? Back? Had I been gone?
I asked her what she meant. She replied with the kind of honesty that only feels gentle because it comes from someone who has known you for years.
“Before, it felt like there was some distance. I wasn’t sure if you’d picked up the coldness of people there in Germany, or if it was just part of adjusting to a new life. But it feels different now. Like we’re finding our way back to understanding each other.”
I did not really know what to do with that.
I had been so occupied with simply moving through my days that I had never stopped to wonder whether the people who knew me before all of this could see something different from the outside.
“I think you’re right,” I told her. “I’ve been so caught up in my own head, just trying to keep up.”
Molly responded with the lightness that only deep friendships can hold.
“It’s okay, dear. I’m just glad it feels like you’re finding your way back. It’s nice to have these chats again, you know?”
After we stopped talking, I kept scrolling up and down through our conversation, reading her messages again. What unsettled me was not really whether she was right. It was the fact that she had noticed something I had not.
Perhaps old friends have a strange advantage that way. They carry an older map of you.
The rest of the day passed quietly. I worked through my backlog, pausing every so often to stretch my neck or rub my aching shoulder. Outside, the snow continued to melt, leaving the streets wet and shiny beneath the faint afternoon light.
Before putting my phone away, I read Molly’s message one more time.
“I hope I’m really back,” I had told her. “Or at least, on my way there.”
Reading this now, I am glad I left it sitting in my drafts instead of deleting it.
At the time, I seemed preoccupied with whether the “real me” had finally returned. I don’t think I would describe it that way anymore. There probably was not one fixed version of myself waiting somewhere to be recovered.
But Molly had known me long enough to notice that something had softened. I had become a little more present again, perhaps a little easier to reach. I could not see it yet because I was still living inside whatever was changing.
There is something quietly comforting about that.
Sometimes another person remembers your face well enough to notice when it begins to look like yours again.
