Nothing, really

Every single thing we do changes us. Every step that we take, until we're so far away from the origin that we can't remember how we started, what we were then.

I was at my father's house recently for a week of semi-vacation, and my sister had unearthed a lot of the things that my late mother had kept. Things of my childhood, but mostly things from high school. Some things that just made me shake my head and wonder why on earth she'd saved these things (like letters I'd written to her during fights. I threw those away unread.), but mostly things that took me back to a past that I'd mostly forgotten. I still can't remember who she was, the girl who thought she could make music, the girl who was confident and brave even in the face of a lot of reasons not to be. The girl who had never been told that she couldn't achieve anything that she wanted to.

And I look back at that now, and part of me just wants to cringe. How could I have been so young, so naïve, so laughably confident when others must have known that the things that I wanted to do were nothing but fantasy? Another part of me, the part that I'm finding just as I write this, is angry for her, angry and sad and defensive, and mostly I just wonder what happened to her? Where did I go from that kind of confidence to what I am now? When did I stop being brave in that young and foolish way?

These days, I feel like everything is just eroding me, wearing me away until there's little left. I think often that I should just end this blog; it's lost its original purpose, and there's little left but these constant futile musings. And my sadness, which isn't exactly helping anyone else.