Let the Shedding Happen

In your 20s, you will outgrow people, jobs, and even versions of yourself. It is very important you let the shedding happen.

I don’t think anyone warns you how uncomfortable outgrowing yourself can be. Everyone talks about growth like it’s this beautiful, cinematic thing; sunrises and becoming your best self and finally figuring it all out. But no one talks about the actual process. The part where the familiar starts to feel unfamiliar, as though you’ve grown past it without meaning to. The part where you look in the mirror and don’t recognize who you were yesterday, and you’re not sure if that’s good or terrifying.

In your 20s, people leave.

Not always dramatically, sometimes it’s just a slow drift, like a boat that was never tied to the dock as tightly as you thought. One day you realize you’re not texting as much, or you’re reaching out and it feels different, or you’re sitting across from someone you used to feel at home with and you suddenly feel like a visitor in your own life. It’s sad, and it’s strange, and it’s necessary. You can love people deeply and still outgrow them. You can miss them while knowing you can’t shrink yourself to fit beside them anymore.

In your 20s, you look around and realize you’ve been holding onto things that stopped holding you a long time ago. You realize you’re allowed to leave. You’re allowed to want more. You’re allowed to admit that something isn’t enough for you anymore. But the hardest part, the part that no one prepares you for is outgrowing versions of yourself.

There are days where I miss who I used to be, even if she was miserable. She was familiar. I knew her habits, her softness, her worst moments. I knew how she loved the wrong people and apologized too much for it. I knew how she would make herself small so she wouldn’t take up the space she deserved. She was predictable. Letting her go felt like peeling my own skin off, it stung but it was freeing.

And that’s what shedding is: it’s leaving

It’s letting go.

It’s becoming.

I’m learning that you can’t become the person you’re meant to be while clinging on to the person you’ve already outgrown. I’m learning that discomfort doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong, sometimes it means you’re doing the bravest thing possible.

In your 20s, things will fall apart, people will walk away and it’s not because you’re failing, it’s because you’re changing.

I think the most important thing you can do is to let it happen. Let the shedding happen. Let the leaving happen. One day you will look back and realize every version you outgrew was a bridge and somehow, without even knowing, you’ve crossed all of them.