Was that really me?

LIFE CHANGES

We change as people across the years, often without realising it. Once upon a time I would have struggled to imagine how I'd cope with a life without work. Now I wonder how I ever had enough time to go there. In a few days I'll be sixty four years old, and I'm pretty sure the last five years have been amongst the best, if not the best, of my life. So much for schooldays.

That realisation has been strengthened by my diary data capture project. I really wasn't very happy in 1982, the year I recently completed, and hoped '83 would prove a bit better for me (I write that as if I'm talking about a different person, and that's what it feels like, for while some character traits remain the same I see so much that's changed completely). The year got off to a good start, but it only took a few days before my initial promise towards positivity was knocked backwards, folded up into a ball and thrown out of the window. At the time I used the word 'depressed' without any real understanding of what it really means, at least in clinical terms, but rereading what I wrote about my life, and the feelings I was experiencing almost four decades ago, I can see that depression was what I had.  Later in life I would have further mental health issues at times, but by then I had the maturity and experience to recognise something of what was happening to me, and the subject was starting to open up more widely in society so there was more information to fall back on.

It comes as a bit of a shock to see my twenty six year old self in the state I was then, and the lack of recognition my condition received - most notably from myself.  But it's also fascinating, seeing a life I now view through very different eyes rolled out before me. That person seems just as much a stranger as he does an younger incarnation of who I am now.

That's a positive of course. Not simply because I'm now a much happier individual  than I was then, but also realising anyone who hasn't developed, metamorphosised, and changed their passions and views over such a long period would be incredibly boring. Consistency, at least in this context, is a very overrated 'virtue'. 

The one thing that hasn't altered is despising tories. I hope it never will.  Seems very unlikely after today's events...