Down to you, constant stranger

You're a kind person,
You're a cold person too.
It's down to you constant stranger
It all comes down to you.

These are a few lines from one of my all time favourite songs, Down to You by Joni Mitchell.  



I love all her work, but this is one that has always resonated with me.  It describes perfectly how we continue to change and evolve, we are constant strangers to ourselves.  And no matter what we do, or what anyone else does to us, our life is our responsibility.  It all comes down to you. 

Many things happen in our lives that shape the people we ultimately become.  For me losing my mother when I was sixteen had a profound effect on me.  It affected me at the time and the grief shaped the person I then became, and it goes on shaping me.  Everything I do seems to be traceable back to being motherless.  I don't mean this to sound maudlin and depressing, it's just the simple fact, it's just who I am.  It's not conscious.  I don't wake up in the morning and think "I don't have a mother, so I'll have Rice Crispies for breakfast".

It's more a subconscious awareness that seeps through my character.  I am reasonably convinced that had she lived many things would be different.  Maybe I'd be more secure, maybe I'd be more sure of myself, maybe I wouldn't have had to battle depression all these years.  Maybe I wouldn't need to try so damn hard.

But  for all of this, the single fact remains.  She did die and her dying has, in many ways, made me who I am.  But, and here's the question that I have started to ask recently, maybe thinking like this is just a convenient way of compartmentalising character traits I don't much like.  Maybe if she had lived I'd have a whole load of other issues with her.  It's possible our good relationship would have changed and become strained and arduous.  I doubt it, but you never know, that is to say, I'll never know.

I have changed a great deal in the last ten or so years.  I have settled down, got married, had children.  I have lost friends, I have gained new ones.  I have developed a good professional reputation. 

My sisters' and I have all become mothers and with that our relationship has evolved and I gain great comfort from them and their advice.  I know that of all the people in the world those two people know exactly how it feels to have children without having our mother.

Physically I am growing old.  My hair is getting greyer, the wrinkles are deeper, the sun damage is catching up with me (and no Arabella that clinique stuff is NOT working).  And mentally I am feeling older.  Maybe it's the constant battle to figure out who I am, maybe it's just life. 

But I am still changing.  I am so many different people in one day and just keeping up is exhausting.  But I know that it's in my control, and as Joni says, "It all comes down to you".

I have always assumed that I thrive on variety, change, pace; that ambition is my driving force and that it spurs me on to ever greater things.  But do you ever sit back and wonder if your values have changed and you've been too busy to notice?  I mean for so long you've believed you are a certain type of person,  that you've never really stopped to look at who you REALLY are?  Am I making any sense at all? 

Possibly not.  Maybe I'll just crack on with life as it is and leave the heavy thinking to people who do it better.

Life eh?

For Josie's writing workshop - she asked: How have you changed? Recently or longer-term…