When Wisdom Quieted the Poet and Left a Ghost Behind

I miss the version of myself who could write poetry without self-consciousness.

He existed in my early twenties—fearless, uninhibited, willing to explore emotional territory that current me finds embarrassing. He wrote love letters that made Happy cry, created stories that surprised even him, believed his words could change the world. That person felt everything intensely and wasn’t ashamed of intensity. He cried during movies, stayed up all night discussing philosophy, thought every conversation could lead to profound revelation.

Now I edit myself before speaking, calculate the social cost of vulnerability, choose safety over authenticity in most interactions. The wisdom I’ve gained came at the expense of spontaneity. The stability I’ve achieved required abandoning the beautiful recklessness that once made me feel fully alive.

This is perhaps aging’s deepest sadness—not just losing physical capacity but grieving the death of former selves who were braver, more open, less aware of limitation. We don’t just age forward; we leave bodies behind. Not physical bodies, but versions of consciousness—whole ways of being in the world that die as we accumulate experience.

The twenty-two-year-old who wrote fearless poetry is as dead as if he’d literally died. He’s not dormant or hidden or waiting to be rediscovered. He’s gone. That particular configuration of naivety and courage, ignorance and openness, can’t be recreated because it depended on not knowing what I know now. You can’t unknow disappointment. You can’t unfeel betrayal. You can’t unlearn that vulnerability has costs.

What if maturity is just accumulated disappointment disguised as wisdom? We call it “growing up” or “becoming realistic” or “learning life’s lessons,” but maybe it’s just a series of small deaths—the death of believing people mean what they say, the death of trusting your emotions won’t be weaponized, the death of thinking intensity is sustainable.

Each disappointment teaches us to protect ourselves. Each betrayal shows us where we were too open. Each failure proves we were naive to believe so completely. And we adjust. We close off. We calculate. We become strategic about what we reveal and to whom. We call this maturity, but what we’ve really done is bury the version of ourselves that believed safety and authenticity could coexist.

The younger me who stayed up discussing philosophy until dawn wasn’t wiser than current me, but he was freer. He hadn’t yet learned that most people aren’t looking for profound connection, that intensity makes people uncomfortable, that admitting you felt deeply about abstract ideas marks you as impractical or pretentious. He spoke without the constant internal editor that now monitors every word for potential misinterpretation or social cost.

The version of me who cried openly during movies hadn’t yet absorbed the message that emotional expression makes others uncomfortable, that men especially are supposed to maintain composure, that feeling things intensely is somehow inappropriate past a certain age. He experienced emotion without immediately analyzing whether that emotion was reasonable or socially acceptable. He just felt, and feeling was enough.

I want to say I miss him, but that’s not quite right. I grieve him. He’s dead, and I killed him. Not intentionally, not consciously, but through a thousand small choices to be safer, more measured, less embarrassingly earnest. Each time I edited a sentence to be less vulnerable, I was participating in his murder. Each time I chose strategic silence over honest expression, I was erasing him a little more.

And I can’t bring him back. Even if I tried to write poetry with his abandon, it would be performance—me pretending to be unselfconscious rather than actually being unselfconscious. The knowledge that vulnerability has costs can’t be unlearned. The awareness of how words can be misunderstood can’t be forgotten. The protective mechanisms I’ve built can’t be simply discarded.

This is the paradox: the experiences that made me who I am also destroyed who I was. The wisdom I’ve gained required killing the beautiful fool who believed everything intensely. I’m more stable now, more reliable, less likely to be devastated by disappointment because I expect less, hope for less, allow myself to feel less. Is this better? It’s certainly safer. But safety came at the cost of aliveness.

Maybe every stage of life requires mourning the previous stage. The child mourns the toddler’s complete unselfconsciousness. The teenager mourns the child’s certainty. The young adult mourns the teenager’s intensity. And middle age mourns the young adult’s fearlessness. We don’t just age—we accumulate ghosts of former selves, versions of us that died so the current version could survive.

Happy still has those love letters I wrote. Sometimes she mentions them, says she misses that side of me. I want to tell her I miss him too, that young man who could pour his heart onto paper without calculating whether it was too much, whether it would be mocked, whether vulnerability would become a weapon. But I can’t write like that anymore. The editor is always there now, the voice that says “that’s too earnest” or “that’s embarrassing” or “people will think you’re melodramatic.”

The cruel joke is that I developed this editor to protect myself, but what it’s protecting is a more guarded, more cautious, more diminished version of who I was. I traded intensity for stability, spontaneity for wisdom, fearlessness for safety. And most days I tell myself it was worth it, that this is just growing up, that everyone makes this trade.

But late at night, I remember the version of myself who stayed up until dawn arguing about philosophy, who cried at movies without shame, who wrote poetry that embarrassed even him with its nakedness. And I realize I’m not just aging—I’m becoming less. More careful, yes. More realistic, certainly. But also more closed, more strategic, more afraid.

What if we’re not supposed to outgrow intensity? What if the wisdom we gain is supposed to deepen our capacity for feeling rather than diminish it? What if maturity could mean being brave enough to remain open despite knowing the costs, rather than using knowledge of costs as justification for shutting down?

I don’t know how to get him back—the fearless poet, the openly emotional young man, the person who believed every conversation could lead to revelation. He’s gone, and I’m what remains. More stable, more realistic, more protected. Also more alone in some fundamental way, separated from direct experience by layers of calculation and self-editing.

Perhaps this is just what aging is: the accumulation of protective layers until you’re so well-defended that nothing can reach the core of you anymore. You’re safe, but you’re also sealed off. You’ve learned wisdom, but you’ve forgotten how to feel things completely. You’ve gained stability by killing the beautiful reckless part of yourself that made life worth stabilizing in the first place.

I miss him. The version of me who could write this essay without seven layers of self-consciousness, without worrying whether it’s too sentimental or too self-indulgent or too raw. He would have just written it, believed it mattered, thought maybe someone needed to read exactly this. Current me writes it while simultaneously apologizing for writing it, aware of every way it could be criticized, every reason it might be dismissed as melodramatic.

He’s dead. I’m what’s left. And most days, I tell myself that’s okay, that’s just growing up, that’s the trade everyone makes. But sometimes, late at night, I grieve the death of former selves who were braver, more open, less aware of all the ways the world can hurt you. And I wonder if the wisdom that killed them was worth what we lost.