vestiges

From a conversation today:

“[…] He didn’t realize how bad it was. How bad your accident was breaks my heart. It’s like the old you died.”

This bothered me. I do consider my accident to be a death of the old me, but where one finds sadness, I found this to be freeing. I am who I am because of my current experiences, not some shit I used to be taught, or used to do, or once believed in another life.

To find sadness in my death is to reject the current me. Whether intentional or not, it is telling me that the old me was preferred. I reject that thought. I am a better person today than I ever was in my past life.

I don’t want someone’s pity, and I don’t want someone mourning my second death. It was tragic, but it is a part of me now; my identity.

I don’t want to have to wonder if people are failing to see me for who I am. I want to be seen and accepted for who I am, not who I was.

It’s not that I really care what people think of me, but I don’t need reminders of a life I voluntarily left long before this death.

Such reminders are fading echoes of someone who no longer exists–shadows cast by a sun that has already set.