i’m a mosaic of everyone i’ve met

Have you ever noticed how you pick up little pieces of people without even meaning to? A phrase here, a habit there—like you’re this walking patchwork quilt, stitched together from everyone who’s ever passed through your life. I know I am. I used to think I was my own person, completely original. But the truth? I’m a mosaic—a messy, colourful collection of everyone I’ve met along the way.

This notion came to my mind when I noticed that I still write and as this one weird symbol I saw one of my classmates write way back in 5th grade, and it has stayed with me till date. Now I hear it in the way I speak. Certain phrases I say without thinking—those came from a friend I haven’t seen in years. My sense of humour? Definitely borrowed from someone who taught me that sarcasm and care can coexist. Even the way I pause before offering advice, choosing my words carefully—that’s from a professor who said, “Most of the time, people just want you to listen.”

‘and’ / the way i write it now / ampersand

It’s wild how much of us is built from moments we didn’t even realize were important. Strangers, for example—I’ve had one-off conversations that stuck with me for years. Like this guy on a train once told me, “Nothing lasts forever, but that’s the good part. It makes you pay attention.” I never saw him again, but his words? They’re in me.

And then there are the people I’ve loved. They left their colours behind—their laughter, their warmth, their way of seeing the world. But it’s not just love that shapes you. Hurt does, too. I’ve picked up sharp edges from people who broke my trust. Even those cracks become part of the pattern. They teach you how to be stronger, how to heal. I like to think those cracks are filled with gold—like kintsugi, the art of mending broken pottery.

What really gets me, though, is knowing I’ve done the same to others. I wonder which parts of me they carry. Something I said in passing, a joke I made, or a small kindness they didn’t expect—am I in their mosaic, too? It’s strange, isn’t it? We’re all out here, trading little pieces of ourselves, often without knowing.

And the people who’ve stayed—the ones who’ve been around long enough to see me fall apart and piece myself back together—they’re the biggest parts of my mosaic. Their colors are the ones that shine through the brightest.

An interesting thought that came to me while writing this essay was, if we’re all just bits and pieces of other people, is there any originality left? Are we just recycled versions of everyone we’ve ever met, stitched together in slightly different ways?

I think about this a lot. Maybe originality isn’t about creating something entirely new (because, let’s be honest, is anything ever truly new?), but about how we arrange the pieces we’ve gathered. Two people can have the same set of influences, the same conversations, even the same experiences, but they won’t put them together in the exact same way. The pattern is what makes us different.

It’s like how no two mosaics are identical, even if they’re made of the same broken tiles. The way you place them—the gaps you leave, the colours you highlight, the cracks you choose to fill or leave exposed—that’s where originality lives. Maybe it’s not about being made of new material, but about what we choose to do with what we have.

And if you think about it, even the people we borrow from were borrowing from others before us. It’s all one endless cycle of influence, layering over itself like brushstrokes on a painting. Maybe the real magic isn’t in being completely original, but in taking everything we’ve collected and making something that still feels like ours.

So, yeah, I’m not just one thing. None of us are. We’re everyone we’ve ever laughed with, argued with, learned from, and lost. And when I step back and look at the whole picture—the chaos, the cracks, and all the colours—I see something pretty beautiful. I see proof that I’ve lived.

And you? You’re part of someone’s mosaic, too.

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author’s note:

vivi, one of my best friends, wrote a similar post about how every person we’ve loved leaves a mark on us. I urge you to read it after mine—it explores a very similar idea but in a way only vivi can. no one writes about love quite like they do.

graveyard of all the people i've ever loved