As this year nears its inevitable conclusion, my mind has been full.

Maybe it’s the big 4-0 that’s rapidly approaching, or the fact that nearly twelve months have passed since I lost my mother.  But I have moments when I look in the mirror and I don’t know who I am anymore.  Things that used to rip me apart don’t phase me, while other minutiae niggle in my brain incessantly, causing me undue stress and reflection.

I keep thinking about the idea that when I was young, I had very clear ideas about life.  What was right and wrong, what the ‘correct’ way to live was … and as the years slip by, and I learn more about life and perspective, it has me questioning everything I thought I knew.

I wonder at how, as time passes, people seem to blur the edges of memories, and re-write history.  Is that how things should be?  Is that how we cope? Is that how we edit our lives so we can sleep peacefully at night?  Does that forgive us our flaws, short-comings and grudges and re-paint history so that we feel comfortable in our own skin?

And if that is the case, what then drives those amongst us who are actually kind, and thoughtful, and amazingly forgiving, to continue to walk those pathes without straying rather than behave badly and edit it as time goes by?

Am I cursed with a memory that should be more fickle but is not?  Or … is my memory as biased as those I feel to be re-imagined?  I’m puzzled by it, perplexed.  Irritated and simultaneously, exhausted.

I have infinitely more questions than I have answers.