That Girl? That's Not Me.

Who is this impostor? And why is she wearing my clothes?

Alright, fine, that is me: the absent-minded I'm-staring-at-trees expression is a dead giveaway. Or maybe I'm contemplating murder. Who knows. But I didn't quite recognize myself the first time I saw this photograph, even though it was taken less than a year ago, even though one would think, given the frequency with which I gaze lovingly at my reflection, that I would immediately identify with anything approximating my own likeness. 

But that girl, she isn't me. She aspires to become me, perhaps, or more correctly we share a desire to become the same person, someone better. She'll have to go through me to get there, just as I'll have to go through someone else, the next in the line of continuous drafts. That girl and I happen to share a collection of memories, memories  that diverge the moment this photo was taken. Our futures look radically different. Our expectations, even more so. 

I mentioned I recently went through my writings and my notebooks, looking for a common thread to the years, stable curiosities that might prove I'm not at as willy-nilly about my interests as I've come to believe. Those common threads are there, the same questions popping up throughout the pages, my attempts at answers in various stages of development. It's reassuring and disheartening at the same time: reassuring in that I will probably spend my entire life in the same pursuits, disheartening that I will surely never have a satisfying answer.

Perhaps resolving the questions isn't the goal, just as my own personal evolution will never produce the perfect, final draft. Whatever perfection may look like, I can never hope to reach it. I can only hope to improve.

Will I recognize myself one year from now? In many ways, I hope so. I hope I can see my current blessings and my shortcomings with the objectivity that is never presently available. I hope I will cherish the memories of these days, and smirk at my impatience for their ending. Mostly, I hope that I'll appreciate how much I've grown in only one year, and be able, by looking back, to see how each of these errors, these brief moments of discovery, and all of these tiny, seemingly inconsequential seeds of ideas have, together, formulated precisely the draft that I'm living then.