I Met My Younger Self for Coffee

A poem for the girl I used to be—and the woman I’m still becoming.

Inspired by the beautiful work of Jennae Cecelia, whose original poem sparked this poetic trend of meeting your younger self for coffee.

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I met my younger self for coffee.
She showed up in oversized confidence and not a hair out of place,
She talked fast, and moved fast too, like she didn’t want to miss a single piece of what the world had to offer her.
She hugged me like I’d been gone too long.

And I had.

She asked me if I was happy.
Not the “Instagram” kind. Not the “I’m doing fine” kind.
The kind you feel in your bones
When you’re alone, with your own silence.

I told her the truth:
No. I’m not always happy.
But I’m free and at peace.
I no longer beat myself up for feeling emotions either,
I’ve learned to sit with them as they come,
And I’ve learned how to guide myself back to baseline.

—

She tilted her head and smirked.
“You wear peace like a luxury handbag now,” she teased.
“And right now, peace is about the only thing I can afford.” She said.

We laughed.
Because that version of me
Didn’t know how much she’d survive.
Didn’t know how much she’d need to leave behind.
Didn’t know healing would cost her the things and people she held on too tightly,

But I thanked her—
For being so resilient,
For pushing through even when it got hard,
Even when she was made to feel like “too much.”

She asked me if I’ve found love.
I told her yes.
But not in the way she imagined.
I found a love for our life in quiet moments with myself,
Through introspection, journaling, and God.
And the beauty of that kind of love?
No one on this earth can take it from us.

Now, I choose me. I choose us. Every time.

She looked at me again,
“Do people still say we’re too sensitive?”

Yes, I say as I laugh.
But now, I know that feeling emotions doesn’t make you weak.
It’s honestly one of my favorite traits now.

“Not what you’ve achieved?” she asks.
Oh no baby,
Accolades now are just confirmation of what we already knew years ago.
We’ve become more intentional about what we consume,
Who we give our time to,
And we’ve set better boundaries in place.

—

Before we said goodbye,
She looked at me one last time.
“I always knew we’d get here,” she whispered.

She looked at me, beaming with pride.
Like all of the hard work over the years finally began to pay off.

Instead of correcting her,
We sat in that moment together,
Because the me now knows,
Becoming never ends.

But when she left, I cried…
Because what she didn’t know
was that to become me,
I had to let go of her.

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