The Last Version of Me — A Writing Challenge

A voice message, a belief and a girl who didn’t survive either

Image by Becca Tapert on Unsplash

Read the free version here.

Our lives keep transitioning, constantly evolving, from one version of ourselves into the next, one role into another. Mine has been eventful enough that when I look back, I can see the seams—a quiet, naive, and innocent younger self slowly becoming a woman who no longer flinches easily; who isn’t scared of what others might think, and who is resilient and calmer.

When I look into the mirror now, I see eyebags, the very fine lines that show up when I smile, and a few grey hairs. But I also see a woman who has moved through enough of life, accumulating experiences and wisdom that nothing or nobody could take away.

The way metal gets tempered, beaten, heated, beaten again, shaped, and reshaped under heat until it holds its form under pressure. Life beat me, and somehow I believe it carved me fine.

If you ask me which version of myself that I cherish and also miss the most, it would be the young girl from my school days. Back then, everything looked good, and everyone seemed nice. Life seemed to be a bed of roses. Thorns weren’t visible yet.

Falling in love was something I looked forward to because that’s what every teen girl raised on Bollywood and Shah Rukh Khan did. I believed love was pure; it would arrive when the time was right, weather every storm alongside you, and end simply happily ever after.

Two people always together in joy and sorrow, in sickness and in health, complementing each other as partners, eventually becoming role models for the children. You know, that silly, naive kind of teen love.

I don’t exactly remember the day that girl stopped existing. Nobody noticed. There wasn’t any dramatic ending or a funeral for that version of mine. She just stopped showing up one day. There wasn’t just one such moment. There were many, scattered over years I would rather not revisit.

But if ever I had to pinpoint the one moment that stayed, it would be when I received a voice message. Some five minutes long or perhaps more. From a man I had trusted and looked up to. During the middle of an argument, the beginning of which I don’t remember. Saying four words at the end before he sent it: You are just a woman!

I don’t remember the whole conversation now, nor do I have it anymore. But I clearly remember the numbness I felt when I heard it, that pause before those four words, the flatness in his voice.

It was something cold. A man reaching for the easiest weapon when every other tactic had failed, one that required no thought and no aim but was sure to strike hard. It was always already loaded. Bringing a woman down, diminishing her, humiliating her, reminding her that her worth, her voice, and her right to take up space were all granted by him and revocable by him.

That she existed by permission. It reminded her of every unwritten rule she had absorbed since childhood about what a woman was allowed to want.

The girl who once believed in happily-ever-after didn’t know such an insult even existed. Nor that such a man could exist. That a man could belittle a woman he vowed to love in such a way.

She never could have fathomed that ugly battles and deep resentment could replace love and trust. She hadn’t yet learned that some men commit this cruelty not only when they are losing an argument but also because reminding her of her place is enough for them to win.

That moment might have been when the shift happened. In mindset, in perception. A belief that hardened with time. That pure love does not exist. That marriages don’t work on love alone. And that trust doesn’t always need love to exist.

The beautiful fairytale that unconditional love would find you when the time is right, asking nothing in return, is just that — a fairytale, suited for fiction and for putting babies to sleep. It doesn’t sell to me now the way it did when I was a teen.

Love curdles, sours further, stinks, and still doesn’t always look like betrayal. Sometimes it simply reminds you of your wrong decisions, your compromises, your smallness, your helplessness.

I don’t think I mourned that girl. That was a version of my innocent self I cherish a lot. I miss how uncomplicated it was back then, believing in things without a second thought. She wasn’t wrong to want a good story, a happily ever after. She just hadn’t yet learned that she would have to write it herself.

Decades later, I know what real love and companionship looks like. Not all of it was a lie. Kindness, it turns out, was the part of that fairytale which was actually true. It just took losing the fairytale to recognise it when it finally arrived.

Thank you, Manmeet Singh Bhatia, for the prompt. I wonder why you keep making me excavate decade-old memories Sir ji…😀

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🕰️ This story is part of ‘The Last Version of Me — A Writing Challenge’ on The Rabbit Note.

🕰️ Who did you have to stop being… to become who you are? Write about the self you left behind and submit to ‘The Last Version of Me’ on The Rabbit Note. Submissions open until 10 July 2026.

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