the space between my eyebrows is pulling tight again, that pinched feeling like a rubber band stretched too far, and it's because i was looking at those old photos from before, before the constant noise and needs and knowing where everything is all the time, keys, snacks, homework, a low thrum of anxiety that never shuts off. i felt this stab of… envy? but that's not quite right, it's more like missing someone i used to be, someone who could just…be. but that version of me would have hated this one, wouldn't understand this bone-deep tiredness and how a five minute shower is a luxury vacation, and it's not BETTER now, not objectively, but it's fuller, like a cup overflowing, sometimes with garbage and sometimes with…i don't know, some kind of strange love that i didn't know existed before, so who am i to mourn someone who never knew this kind of messy, beautiful, shattering…everything. and i guess that's why it feels so wrong to want that other life back, it's not because it was better, it's because it was a lie, a perfectly curated instagram life of someone who didn't even know what real life was yet.