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The Reunion That Broke Me
The DJ was playing that Drake song about God having plans when I walked into my five-year college reunion, wearing a dress I had bought specifically to look like I had not bought it specifically for this event. The bass rattled cheap champagne flutes. Everyone was pretending we had not all aged in the exact ways we feared.
I was three proseccos deep when it hit me, I’m in a scattered self movie. Not nostalgia. Something worse.
I had left parts of myself all over this room.
Near the windows was the corner where I cried over my thesis, convinced it would decide my worth. The bathroom where my first panic attack bloomed quietly in a locked stall. The table where I pretended to understand Foucault to impress a philosophy major who turned out to be intensely boring in bed.
This was the scattered self in real time. Not poetic. Not tragic. Just unattended pieces of me, still waiting in places I had outgrown but never properly left.
There is something destabilizing about realizing you have moved forward while parts of you remain still, holding coats, saving seats, and expecting you to return.
The Geography of Who We Used to Be
Matt was by the bar, still telling the story of his sophomore-year girlfriend as if she had died instead of moving to Seattle and marrying an orthodontist. He checked his phone compulsively. I knew he was looking at her Instagram, the one he said he had unfollowed.
Matt was not just attending the reunion. A version of him was permanently stationed in 2016, waiting in a coffee shop where she asked for space, which turned out to mean all of it.
This is what leaving pieces of yourself actually looks like. Not drama. Not longing. Just a quiet misplacement of identity. His emotional life had pins in every place she had mattered, and he was trying to build a future with a fragmented map.
Sue was worse in a different way.
She had changed careers three times and was now “disrupting the wellness space,” which seemed to involve selling expensive water to people with trust funds. She spoke to me, not at me, scanning the room for better leverage while narrating her reinvention.
Sue had a fragmented identity scattered across cities, titles, aesthetics, and exits. Each version of herself had been convincing. None of them seemed inhabited.
Research on identity coherence suggests that when we repeatedly abandon parts of ourselves to fit new environments, we lose the internal thread that makes a life feel continuous. Sue was not lost. She was over-edited.
The Peter Problem
Peter had not changed at all.
Same khakis. Exact scripture quotes delivered with the confidence of someone whose beliefs had never been tested by loss. His wife stood beside him with the expression of someone screaming silently from behind good manners.
Peter had not scattered himself geographically. His scattered self existed across time. Parts of him were fossilized at twenty-two, preserved in certainty, untouched by doubt or growth.
Michael Singer writes about the difference between who you are and who you think you are. Peter had confused identity with ideology. Whatever was alive underneath had been buried carefully, lovingly, and completely.
[“The Inventory: Map of Fragmentation” – Image by moneycatzzz.com]
Taking Inventory
Standing there, I did what most people do in moments like this. I turned inward.
Where had I left myself?
A version of me was still trying to impress my creative writing professor, revising sentences for approval from a man who probably could not pick me out of a lineup. Another version lived with James, my college boyfriend, not because I missed him, but because I had allowed him to define me for years and never reclaimed that territory.
Professional Savannah was scattered across various jobs taken to establish credibility. Creative Savannah was abandoned when rent became louder than curiosity. Spontaneous Savannah had been sacrificed to responsibility with barely a ceremony.
Studies on psychological integration consistently show that well-being depends less on success and more on internal continuity. But no one teaches you how to gather yourself back once you have learned to survive by dividing.
What People Call Soul Retrieval
The phrase soul retrieval practice sounds indulgent, like something that requires linen pants and excessive turquoise. But the idea is older and simpler than that.
Across cultures, there is an understanding that trauma, ambition, love, and loss can fracture us. Not permanently. But carelessly.
Robin Wall Kimmerer describes becoming indigenous to your own life. Not by traveling elsewhere, but by returning. By remembering where you left yourself and why.
I began my own soul retrieval practice in the reunion bathroom, because women tend to have their most honest conversations with mirrors.
Looking at my face, I’m older, despite the retinol and discipline; I did something small and radical.
I called myself back.
I called back the part of me still seeking validation from people who no longer knew me.
I called back the part of me stuck in arguments that ended years ago.
I called back the belief that success had to hurt to be considered genuine.
A drunk woman asked if I was okay. I said yes. It was both true and untrue, which felt honest enough.
The Cultural Pressure to Scatter
We live in a system that rewards leaving pieces of yourself everywhere.
We compartmentalize our lives, separating work from our personal spheres. We curate for platforms, producing versions optimized for attention. We shapeshift for relationships, becoming legible instead of authentic.
This is how the scattered self becomes normalized. You stop noticing the leakage. You feel tired.
A fragmented identity is not a failure of discipline. It is a survival response to environments that value performance over presence.
But fragmentation has a cost. Eventually, the effort of maintaining multiple selves exceeds the benefit.
[“The Retrieval: Calling the Pieces Home” – Image by moneycatzzz.com]
Learning to Stop the Leaks
I started paying attention to where my energy went.
Draft emails written to impress people from my past. Leaks.
Decisions were made to defend old versions of myself. Leaks.
Explaining my life to imaginary critics from 2015. Constant leakage.
Mindfulness research suggests that integration happens not through reinvention but through sustained presence. You do not become whole by adding things together. You become whole by stopping abandonment.
The scattered self thrives on the belief that you must be everywhere to be someone. The truth is quieter. You become someone by staying.
Coming Home, Slowly
In the weeks after the reunion, I made small changes that looked insignificant from the outside.
I deleted drafts never meant to be sent. I stopped wearing clothes for bodies I no longer had. I let conversations end without winning them.
This is soul retrieval practice as lived reality. Not dramatic. Not ceremonial. Just the daily choice to stop leaving yourself behind.
Each reclaimed piece made me heavier in the best way. More grounded. Less impressive. Harder to move, but harder to lose.
The scattered self promises freedom through multiplicity. But absolute freedom comes from continuity. From being one person wherever you are.
Matt is still posting about his ex. Sue is probably rebranding. Peter remains certain.
I am here.
Not exceptional. Not optimized. But intact.
And for the first time in years, that feels like enough.
The Required Reading: A Bibliography for Discovering Your Inner Self
The Serviceberry
The Untethered Soul
The Gifts of Imperfection
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Acknowledgment: Cover Image by moneycatzzz.com
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