Sometimes, we seem to lose sight of who we think that we are;
Something can happen, and it feels as if we are broken into pieces.

You forget who you are,
You forget why certain things in life had or have meaning to you,
You forget how to smile with the same enthusiasm as you once had,
You forget why you found happiness around certain people or in certain events,
You forget your reason for living.

Yet, you pick yourself back up, give yourself a pat on the back and carry on.

You remember how to smile,
You remember how to laugh,
You remember how to be yourself,
You remember how to live again, and go on with your life as if nothing had ever happened.

In each relapse and recovery, however, a small piece of yourself is lost in the process. You cannot feel it, but you can see it when you take a step back and reflect upon the past.

An old habit is replaced with a new fixation,
A new characteristic has taken over in your personality,
An old friend is no longer on speaking terms with you,
A plethora of old notes and keepsakes were destroyed in an erstwhile fit of rage,
A sweet memory turned sour by a recent event.

Each time we fall into this cycle, we lose a small piece of ourselves.
We change, sometimes for the better, but sometimes for the worse.
Some never leave the cycle, while others simply relive it one too many times.

Valuable people, places, memories, recollections, and thoughts lost to the past, pieces of you that you tried to keep but ended up losing in the process. You don't want to change, you don't want to leave these pieces behind.

But each time you break you forget to pick up the pieces that fall off of you, or you lose them. You can never fully heal and return to the way you were before you shattered into shards. Without certain fragments, you can never be put back together the same way.

Yet, people grow, people change. These missing pieces grow back and manifest in new and strange ways, and it isn't all anxiety and melancholy.

Eventually, we can learn to live, love, learn, act, and behave freely once more; we can use the new pieces of ourselves to change into something great, new, exiting. We can flourish in another form, because sometimes, we are meant to be something other than what we had originally started out to be.

Sometimes, we seem to lose sight of who we think that we are;
But then something can happen, and it feels as if we are made whole again.