I don’t really miss the person I used to be. But it has taken me years to be comfortable with my new personality. It’s the little things that get to me from time to time.

I do miss coffee. I used to love the smell of coffee—now it makes me gag. Coffee smells like old socks to me now. It tastes about the same.

I miss my eidetic memory. I had to draw and label all of the rivers in Europe for a Geography test, and that was the easiest test I’d ever taken. I just stared at the map for five minutes before I was handed the test, drew and labeled the rivers, and handed it in. I miss having that kind of recall.

I miss playing video games. I get really flooded from the test of hand/eye coordination and have to recover from overstimulation if I do play a video game.

I miss going to theme parks and riding roller coasters. I finally moved somewhere where there’s one close enough that it’s not half a day’s drive away, and I can’t ride any of the rollercoasters. I loved the feeling I’d get late at night after a day going on rides—how my body would still swoop every so often as it remembered the sensations of the day. I will never experience that again.

I miss going to the movies all the time. The last movie I was able to watch in theaters was Thor: Ragnarok. The day after I went to the movie, I was still recovering from the experience of light and sound and laughing too hard. I couldn’t put myself through that again, so I haven’t been to the movies since 2017.

That’s a huge deal for me. I used to go practically every Wednesday morning. I’d have entire theaters to myself.

I haven’t been able to withstand watching a movie in one sitting since I watched The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent in February of 2023.

As of writing this, it’s November. I haven’t been able to finish a movie in one sitting for most of the year.

And I hate that. I can feel my interests waning and it disturbs me with how blank I feel because of it.

I don’t miss interacting with people. People exhaust me and I’ve always preferred to be alone. I don’t have local friends and the fact that I kind of prefer it that way is a comforting thing to me. I’m not worrying about how someone else perceives me. I don’t have to force myself to socialize. I don’t remember how I used to feel about social interaction, but I can’t stand it anymore.

I’m a hermit, but I’m okay with it. I like my alone time and my quiet. It’s way less stressful. It hurts a lot less when I’m alone.

I’ve reached the stage of acceptance in grief. I accept that this is my normal now. I accept that nothing will change that. I accept that I can’t do all the things I used to be able to do.

It sucks, but it is what it is.