We are everything we are. Everything we've lived, everything we've experienced, liked, hated, forgotten…, has turned us into the people we are today.
We are, but we change, and changing is part of who we are. I'm not the same person I was five years ago, yet something remains: I still have a thing for chocolate and books, although I'm more mature and fearless than back then. I was, but I'm not who I was anymore.
Identity is complicated. It changes, but there's always something there to comfort us, a tiny little voice that calms us down whenever we don't recognize ourselves. "It's still you, this person you've become", it says. We believe that voice because it brings back our memories. Those stay with us forever, and yet they change too. Some we forget, some we remember quite differently to the way they happened. Some we love. Some we don't.
The change is good and also something we need to get used to, because we can't stop time and stay the same forever. However, it's always a relief to recognize the person you've become and identify it with the one you were. We are the ones that are gonna be with ourselves until death comes, aren't we?
That's why it felt so good to re-read “The unchosen one” the other day. It's something I wrote a while ago about something that happened years ago, yet it feels fresh. It feels like me. That text is not everything I am; I chose which things I'd say and which ones I'd keep to myself, and that choice –which is something only someone with my same identity would've done the exact same way– is one I don't regret at all. I feel identified with it, if I were to make that choice again I wouldn't change a thing.
“The unchosen one” is not everything I am, but it is everything I once where and one of the many reasons why I am who I am today.
