on missing people who haven't left

There's a kind of missing that has nothing to do with absence. My best friend lives in the same city. I see her every other Saturday. But there's a version of her that existed in 2018 — before the job change and the relationship and the apartment — that I miss sometimes, sharply, the way you miss a song that reminds you of a specific summer. She hasn't gone anywhere. She's better now than she was in 2018, honestly. More settled. More herself in certain ways. But that version is gone and I didn't know to say goodbye to it. This is true of everyone I've known for long enough. There are prior versions walking around inside the current people, and occasionally I miss them. The college version of my mother's laugh. The version of my first roommate who used to stay up until three reading. The version of me at twenty-four who was more reckless and more open and thought she knew less than she did. None of this is grief, exactly. More like — tenderness toward time. Toward the people we've been who don't know they're going to change.