Challenging change.

 Do people really change?

With a Cosmo in one hand… and a little heartbreak in the other.

I’ve always believed people change.

New city, new job, new number saved as ‘’Don’t text back’’. It’s easy to think that with enough time and emotional exfoliation, we shed our old selves like last season’s wardrobe. But one night, in the quiet space between a missed call and a memory, I asked myself:

Do people really change… or do we just learn to accessorize our damage?

Change is seductive.

It wears new habits, speaks in affirmations, and posts cryptic captions about growth. It walks differently. It texts less, it goes to Pilates. But if you scratch the surface, you might find the same fears, the same wounds, dressed in neutral tones.

You see, real change - the kind that comes from the inside - is never loud. It’s not a photoshoot. It’s not something you annonce with a glass of wine and a dramatic ‘’I’ve changed.’’ True change never needs to be shouted. It doesn’t come with declarations or aesthetic rebrands.

It shows itself quietly - through consistency, through effort, through silence.

It’s subtle. It’s slow.

It’s staying silent when you used to scream.

It’s choosing peace over power.

It’s replying, but with boundaries this time.

Sometimes people change because life humbles them.

Other times, they pretend to change because they’ve learned the choreography of someone who’s evolved - but not the meaning behind the steps.

And maybe that’s why we drift apart. Not because someone became someone else… but because they couldn’t stop being exactly who they were.

The truth is:

Real change doesn’t ask to be seen.

It simply is.

So I sat there, barefoot but emotionally overdressed, and typed this column - wondering if the version of me writing it… was finally different from the one who once needed to.

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