Cancer

The version of yourself that you outgrew does not disappear when you stop being it. It stays in your voice when you comfort someone else, in the way you arrange a room, in what you notice first about a stranger. You can feel it most clearly in moments when someone asks you for advice and the answer comes from a place you thought you had moved past. What feels like returning is actually the useful parts traveling forward with you. The person you were becomes the way you know how to be gentle with the person you are becoming.