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Real Stories

The Unbecoming

Everyone knows the phrase: the only constant in life is change. It’s knowingly true without even really knowing it. Life is cyclical. One day we love dark chocolate, the next day it doesn’t suit our tastebuds. And the day after that, dark chocolate is once again our favorite.

Maybe we treat people as cyclically as we do dark chocolate; or our favorite series on Netflix that we rewatch only when we feel like it, or need a nostalgic feeling.

I find that whenever something is satisfactory, there is a brief feeling that dances in my brain, a dalliance of paranoia. It poses the question: What if I never feel this again?

The scariest part about it all, is that you won’t feel that moment again. But you might feel better ones. Or different ones. The same goes for love. You might not feel that type of love again. You might have better loves, worse loves or different loves. But is it all relevant?

You might go to Belgium and taste the best dark chocolate you ever have, only to go to Paris and fall in love with a chocolate macaroon that made you a little nostalgic for that dark chocolate in Belgium.

When we become so enthralled with something, we hope for grandeur. We dream a little bigger and we wish a little louder.

*Cue any Disney princess song*

But we always fall back onto nostalgia, falling into the same cycles and replaying emotions past in our mind.

I loved my life in a city where I spent so much time developing and fostering relationships. I moved to a different city, one that held so many special memories in my mind, only to find myself missing the city I had just moved from. I never experienced regret in my life until that moment. I began thinking of the past, and all the blind confidence I had coursing through my veins. Was I becoming a person living with fear? Was I becoming a shell of who I was?

Hence the unbecoming.

Frozen in the sub-zero temperatures of my new city, and my emotions, I found myself unbecoming of who I currently was, and into someone I recognized far more. The person I was.

And it was a simple formula: Future – Past = Present.

I found myself in the present and realized that I really didn’t become anything at all. I just was. And that was the only unbecoming I needed. And dark chocolate. Apparently I needed dark chocolate.

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by Alyssa Thomas

Freelance writer traveling through different cities and stories. Sprinkled with a dose of humor and curiosity, I write about things that construct our lives- love, travel, and hope.


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