My sweet best friend Lib told me about an idea she had seen before that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: that we are a mosaic of everyone we have ever loved.
I think there is something so beautiful about that. Not because I believe we are simply made up of other people, but because I think there are little pieces of the people we love that become so deeply intertwined with us that eventually, we can’t tell where they end and we begin.
When I look at you, I see me. Not in totality. You are entirely your own person, and so am I. But I see little pieces of myself that I know wouldn’t be there in quite the same way if I hadn’t known you. I hear the things you have said to me in the way I talk to other people. I recognize things you have taught me in the way I show up for the people I love. Sometimes I catch myself doing something and realize, years later, that I learned it from someone who mattered to me.
I think that’s one of the strangest and most beautiful things about growing up. We spend so much time trying to figure out who we are, as if there is one definitive version of ourselves waiting somewhere inside of us to be discovered. But maybe we aren’t meant to be entirely self-made. Maybe who we become is shaped, in part, by the people who find us along the way.
The friend who taught you how to laugh at yourself. The person who made you feel safe enough to tell the truth. The one who showed you that you could be loved without having to be perfect first. The person who encouraged you when you didn’t really believe in yourself yet. The people who stayed long enough to change you.
I feel incredibly lucky when I think about the people who have surrounded me.
Not because my life has been perfect, or because every relationship I’ve had has lasted, or because I’ve never been hurt. I feel lucky because I have been given people who have loved me in ways that have made me a better person. People who have reminded me who I am when I’ve forgotten. People who have made life feel a little softer simply by being in it.
Libby is one of those people for me.
There is something about Lib’s loyalty that I don’t know if I will ever be able to properly explain. She has this consistency about her that makes you feel like you don’t have to wonder where you stand. She listens. She remembers. She shows up. She makes you feel heard without needing to have the perfect thing to say back.
More than anything, she has taught me what it feels like to know that someone is going to be there.
Not necessarily every second. Not necessarily in the same city. Not even necessarily in the same chapter of life.
Just there.
There is such comfort in that kind of love. The kind where distance doesn’t threaten the relationship because you already know what is underneath it. The kind where you can move through different seasons of your life and still come back to each other without having to rebuild what was lost. The kind where you don’t have to constantly ask, Are we okay? Are you still here? Do you still care?
You just know.
Maybe that’s what consistency really is. It doesn’t mean being physically present all the time, talking every day, or knowing every detail of someone’s life. Sometimes it is simply the quiet knowledge that if you really need them, they will be there. Time and distance can change the shape of a friendship without changing its foundation.
I think we underestimate how much that kind of love shapes us.
Being loved consistently teaches you what love can feel like. Being listened to teaches you how to listen. Being given grace teaches you how to give it. Being remembered teaches you to remember other people.
And sometimes I wonder how many parts of me are actually pieces of someone else.
Maybe the way I love my friends came from the people who loved me first. Maybe the way I know when someone needs to be listened to came from someone who once sat and listened to me. Maybe the parts of myself that I like the most are, in some small way, evidence of the people who have poured into me.
Because we are all leaving something behind in each other.
A phrase. A habit. A memory. A way of seeing the world. A little bit of courage. A favorite song. A stupid inside joke that somehow survives for years. The confidence to try something new. The knowledge that someone will answer when you call.
Tiny things that seem insignificant when they happen, but somehow become part of the architecture of who we are.
I think that’s what Lib’s idea made me understand.
We don’t just love people and then move on with our lives unchanged. We take them with us.
We carry the people who have mattered to us into every room they will never enter. We carry their words into conversations they will never hear. We carry their influence into relationships they will never meet. We carry the way they loved us into the way we love everyone who comes after them.
And maybe that’s the closest thing we have to permanence.
People change. Cities change. Friendships change. We grow older. Life pulls people in different directions. Some people stay for a lifetime, and some people only stay long enough to give us something we needed before they go.
But the pieces remain.
When I look at the people I love, I don’t just see who they are.
I see little pieces of myself.
And when I look at myself, I see them.
The people who taught me. The people who listened to me. The people who made me laugh. The people who challenged me. The people who stayed. The people who loved me at times when I wasn’t particularly easy to love.
I am made better by the people I have been lucky enough to surround myself with.
And if I am a mosaic of everyone I have ever loved, then I hope I am carrying some really beautiful pieces.
More than that, I hope I am leaving some beautiful pieces behind, too.
Because maybe that is what happens when we love people deeply enough.
They don’t disappear when they leave the room. They don’t disappear when they move away, when the friendship changes, or when life takes you in different directions.
They become part of you.
And maybe one day, years from now, someone will look at me and recognize a little piece of themselves, too.
I hope so.
Because I think the most beautiful thing we can do with a life is leave people a little more themselves than we found them.
And if we’re lucky, we get to spend our lives becoming a little bit of everyone we were lucky enough to love.
Love,
Emi Sue
(Lib if you are reading this: I am so thankful for our friendship. And thank you so much for this fun idea. It’s like you meet someone and want to best friends forever; that’s us. I love you!)
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