Q

The very first post captured on this blog is on 8 March, 2006. Technically we are 20 years and 2 months! What an incredible feat that I’ve kept up this blog from age 13 to today, age 33 and a mother (of two!!!) – with minimally two updates every year, usually more.

My babies are closer in age to my self when I started than I am now to her.

I read through some archives as I’m wont to do at times. The words are familiar; I feel close to her and remember her feelings and fears, ideals and desires as she wrote them.

Yet, this time and for the very first time, I was reading myself as an Other than my self. Some of the beliefs I held, I hear and understand but have evolved. The feelings I remember but no longer resonate with.

Does this mean I have undergone a great identity transformation, or rather a slow transformation that has finally regenerated its last remaining cells — the Ship of Theseus replacing its last wooden plank?

And yet I’m still here, still writing in the same place, ‘same same but different’. I think I’m happier than before, perhaps simpler – in that I’ve stripped down a lot of the non-essentials, more sure-footed than ever despite very Adult Responsibilities and Shit Getting Real. I think I’m exactly where I want to be, and where my 13 and 23 year old selves would have wanted to be at 33.

What a special moment though. I imagine every year of myself – vivid and real – standing in line behind me. I love every one of them, am glad that i have captured their voice and thoughts. All 33 of us peer over the shoulder of the next, as I do now, wondering what’s next, who we will create as an amalgation and a progression of all of us.