I was doom scrolling on TikTok the other day, as one does, and happened upon a live of a woman touting herself as a “business coach”.

I’ve followed this woman for a while and decided to click into her live to see what she had to say that day. But her statement made me go, “Huh.”

She said, “I wouldn’t hang out with my former self. Why would I? I don’t like those versions of me.”

I had heard enough. I clicked out of the live and continued scrolling, but her words had lodged themselves into that part of my brain where the icks live. She dismissed her former selves with such confidence that it made me a bit…sad.

This “business coach” and I share a much different philosophy on our former selves. She seems to be about abandoning the versions of herself that got her to this point, while I am more aligned with the short story, Eleven by Sandra Cisneros, where her main character talks about how no matter how old she gets, she will always feel all the ages she was before.

I like that, that we are all made of all the people we were before our current iterations.

Her statement made me think about the girl I was at 24, dancing with my friends at clubs in New Brunswick and Brooklyn and Hoboken to Rihanna, and the girl I was at 31, getting over a heartbreak, planning my next trip to Europe, and trying to understand my body and panic attacks. I was the girl at 15, trying to get my dad to extend my curfew so I could go to the River Edge diner with my friends after play practice, and the girl I was at 19, riding around in my best friend’s car every Thursday night while listening to Jack’s Mannequin and Dashboard Confessional after my last class of the day.

There are so many girls that I’ve been, and I love all of them. They are all me. The fun ones and the anxious ones and the heartbroken ones. I would hang out with the girl who smoked cigarettes in her empty bathtub while playing her ukulele, and I would hang out with the girl who impulsively drove to Coney Island with her friend on a Friday night during the summer just to ride The Cyclone.

I don’t rebuke or disown any of these girls I’ve been, in fact, I celebrate them. All of them. Because without them, I wouldn’t have such fond memories or fabulous friends. She is the ladder on which I currently stand, and if it hadn’t been for her bravery and imagination, I wouldn’t be living the life I’m living now.

So, would I hang out with former versions of myself?

The answer is a resounding yes. Every single one of them.

Until next week, friends.