I used to be a jump-rope person.

Not casually. Not “oh look, there’s a rope.” I was a bring-a-jump-rope-on-a-cross-country-road-trip person.

There are photos of me at rest stops somewhere in the middle of America, gleefully hopping like an overcaffeinated camp counselor while everyone else was focused on beef jerky and existential dread. Jumping rope wasn’t exercise. It was identity. It was cardio with flair. It was, frankly, a lifestyle brand.

I don’t think I even own a jump rope anymore.

I have no memory of the breakup. No dramatic farewell. No ceremonial last hop. One day I was a jump-rope person, and now I am a person who occasionally throws out her back reaching for a charger.

This is how it happens.

Not with decisions. With drift.

Take movie theaters. When I lived in Los Angeles, I went to the movies every weekend. Religiously. I treated cinema like some people treat church or SoulCycle. I knew release schedules. Directors. Indie buzz. Oscar whispers.

Now? I couldn’t name a single movie currently in theaters if my life depended on it.

If you told me a film called Explosions 9: Emotional Reckoning was topping the box office, I’d nod thoughtfully and say, “Ah yes, the franchise really matured.”

Then there’s Coke Zero. I used to drink it constantly. Daily. Devotedly. If hydration were a personality quiz, my result was “Artificially Sweetened Loyalty.”

I didn’t quit. I didn’t swear it off. I didn’t have a health epiphany involving lemons and moral superiority.

I just stopped.

It slipped quietly out of my life like a background character written off mid-season. No finale, no explanation, no contract dispute announcement.

Which makes me think about how many things enter our lives loudly and leave silently.

Hobbies. Habits. Obsessions. Entire eras of ourselves.

It’s less like reinvention and more like rotation. It’s a slow emotional carousel of who we are at any given moment.

Kind of like that old soap opera, As the World Turns. Is that still on? Do soaps still exist? I genuinely have no idea.

Many moons ago, I would have known. I would have had opinions. Possibly strong ones. Possibly delivered while jumping rope and sipping a Coke Zero outside a movie theater.

And, books! I used to read a ton. Now, not so much.

Now I know other things.
I know how to schedule MRIs.
I know the precise emotional tone of a 5 a.m. alarm. I know that interests don’t vanish. They compost.

They turn into whatever comes next.

Maybe someday I’ll buy another jump rope. Maybe I won’t.

Either way, I like knowing that somewhere in the archive of my life there’s a version of me mid-air at a rest stop, suspended between who I was and who I’d become.

And honestly? She looked like she was having a great time.