I Am Not the Man I Used to Be, And That’s the Point.

I'm Not The Man I Used To Be

I was told recently that I’m not the man I used to be.

It wasn’t said gently. It wasn’t said with concern. It was thrown at me in the heat of an argument, sharpened to wound, and it worked. Not because it was cruel, but because it was true.

I sat with that sentence longer than I expected to. At first, it felt like an accusation. A verdict. As if the man I was had died somewhere along the way and I was standing trial for it, but once the emotional noise settled, something quieter and more dangerous surfaced.

It was the truth!

I am not the man I used to be.

All things being equal, that realization cracked something open.

The last few years have not been kind. Life hasn’t just tested me; it’s leaned in, applied pressure, and waited to see what would give. I’ve taken hits in places I thought were solid. Relationships, identity, purpose, direction. The kind of hits that don’t leave visible bruises but slowly rearrange who you are.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped honoring my boundaries. Not all at once! That’s never how it happens. It was death by a thousand concessions.

One time letting disrespect slide because I was tired.

One time accepting ambiguity because clarity felt like too much work.

One time choosing peace over truth, even when the peace was fake and the truth was urgent.

Psychologically, this is how erosion works. You don’t wake up one day without a spine. You trade pieces of it for temporary relief. The mind calls it adaptation. The nervous system calls it survival, but the soul knows it as surrender.

I allowed myself to be reshaped by circumstances instead of choosing how I would change. Honestly, that distinction matters more than people realize.

Change is inevitable, and that’s not wisdom, that’s biology. Every experience rewires something. Trauma especially doesn’t ask for permission. It edits you in the background. So when you don’t consciously integrate what you’ve lived through, you don’t remain neutral. You become reactive. You become a product of whatever hit you hardest last.

Honestly, that’s what happened to me.

I didn’t lose my identity overnight. I misplaced it slowly, leaving pieces behind in situations that demanded too much and gave too little back.

I adjusted.

I accommodated.

I endured, and I told myself I was being strong.

Truth be told, strength without agency isn’t strength. It’s compliance.

In Psychology,Ttere’s a concept called learned helplessness. It relates to situations when someone is repeatedly exposed to situations where their actions don’t change the outcome, they eventually stop trying. Not because they’re weak, but because their brain learns that effort is pointless.

Man,that hit uncomfortably close!

I wasn’t lazy.

I wasn’t indifferent.

I was exhausted, and exhaustion makes surrender look reasonable.

The argument that started all this forced me to see something I had avoided.

I had handed over authorship of my becoming. I let life, circumstances, other people’s expectations, and other people’s chaos decide who I was turning into. I adapted to survive, but I never stopped to ask whether I liked what I was adapting into.

Sadly, that’s the real danger of hard seasons. Not that they change you, but that they change you without your consent.

Here’s the part people don’t like to hear. Being shaped by pain is understandable. Staying shaped by it is a choice!

At some point, accountability enters the room, if you let it.

Quietly, without judgment, and asks a single question: “Who is responsible for who you are becoming now?”

That question doesn’t care about how unfair things were or are. It doesn’t minimize what you’ve been through. It just refuses to let your past remain in the driver’s seat.

I am not the man I used to be. Hell, that man existed before certain losses, before certain betrayals, before certain realities made themselves known. Expecting to return to him is fantasy. Nostalgia dressed up as healing.

As a matter of fact, becoming someone I don’t recognize or respect is not inevitable either!

Thankfully, there’s a third option we don’t talk about enough: intentional reconstruction.

Not the motivational kind. The uncomfortable kind.

It means revisiting boundaries and enforcing them even when it costs you relationships. It means demanding clarity instead of romanticizing confusion. It means recognizing where you tolerated disrespect not because you deserved it, but because you forgot your own value.

It also means grieving the version of yourself that didn’t know what you know now.

You don’t shame that man. He did the best he could with the information and tools he had, but you don’t let him run the show anymore either.

Growth isn’t about becoming harder or colder. That’s a common misinterpretation.

It’s about becoming more self-directed.

Less available for nonsense.

Less willing to disappear to keep others comfortable.

Life will change me. That part is non-negotiable.

I am all too aware, but who I become in that change is no longer up for debate.

I refuse to be a passive outcome.

I refuse to let pain be the architect while I stand by pretending resilience is the same as silence. I am reclaiming authorship, even if the rewrite is messy, even if it costs me people who preferred the version of me that didn’t push back.

So yes, I’m not the man I used to be.

I’m becoming the man who decides.

I embark on this journey, not knowing what that will look like, but I embark with intent now. Ciao! Damien