Loosing Parts of Yourself

The more you evolve, the more you lose a part of yourself.

Think about a situation where you move cities, or even countries. It is almost undeniable that as soon as the environment changes, your perspective changes too. When you change, will those same values still align with the friends you left back home? Sometimes they don’t even understand what you are talking about.

You might not necessarily evolve in position or financially, but your way of judgment surely changes as the number of experiences and acquaintances in your life increases over time.

I think it is inevitable. You have to lose parts of your old self to make room for new experiences.

But what does it mean to lose parts of yourself?

Immigrants often feel lonely. They don’t fully relate to many things happening around them, and sometimes they no longer relate to the values back home either. You lose relatability when talking to a friend. You can’t laugh at the same jokes, and you cannot agree with the same values anymore. It makes you feel distant. You start wondering, why am I not getting them anymore? You feel alone in that conversation, or sometimes they feel alone.

At the same time, you cannot fully connect with the people in front of you either, because your upbringing is different, your morals are different, and most importantly, you don’t know them enough to trust them.

Sometimes you are losing old friends but not gaining new ones. It becomes tricky when you realize that with every old habit, old lifestyle, and old person you lose in the present, you are also losing parts of yourself that those situations once shaped.

Now neither those people nor those habits exist, and the parts of yourself that were created in those environments slowly fade away.

You begin making yourself again — with new interests and a new lifestyle.

You lose familiarity.

You lose certain memories and body language.

You have to let go of old habits.

You lose your old perspective.

You lose patience.

You lose friends.

But one thing you try not to lose is yourself — instead, you keep building new parts of yourself without the support system that shaped you for so many years in the past.

All of this happens to make room for new perspectives and new interests.

Yet, in a world like this, where many relationships feel superficial, doesn’t it feel comforting to still have the people we grew up with? The people who knew us before all these new inventions and complexities existed. Sometimes reconnecting with them makes us feel grounded again.

“Be more grounded,” or “stay down to earth” — these are statements we often hear when people start to evolve or aim higher.

But how can you stay grounded when your senses are working overtime?

At the same time, there are so many decisions we are constantly making, often carefully and thoughtfully.

But the truth is, you can never fully align with situations and people at the same time.

They say transitioning is challenging. You walk alone during this period.

Think of it like this: there are people standing on either side of a bridge, and you are the only one crossing it. The bridge has several stops along the way. People on both sides are moving toward their own destinations because that is where they are meant to go.

At that moment, no one will necessarily follow you or encourage you. They simply watch you cross the bridge slowly. It is not because they don’t care, but because their destination lies somewhere else.

And the people on the other side of the bridge are not waiting for you either.

You meet them along the way, collect experiences and memories, and continue moving forward.

Some people are constantly moving like this. Every time you meet them, they are in a new phase of transition.

Perhaps that is who we are.

We are immigrants — constantly losing parts of ourselves to discover new ones.

And somewhere along the way, I believe that the search itself becomes our home.