In fine

I finally cleared out my London storage unit, and it’s funny the things you come across when you start unpacking more than just boxes.

Old notebooks, pics you don’t remember posing for, conversations tucked away between the pages of time. The London years feel like they happened to someone else - someone who lived with more certainty and a worse phone camera.

Somewhere between the bubble wrap and dust, I started thinking about the Ship of Theseus. If you replace a ship’s planks one by one until none of the original pieces remain… is it still the same ship? Or does the soul live in its shape, its purpose, its journey?

It made me wonder how much of who I was back then is still part of me now? And how many pieces have I quietly, necessarily, replaced? And at what rate of change?

One thing you realise, eventually, is that there is no constant. People say what they mean, and maybe they do mean it -- but only for who they are at that moment. Every promise is really just an intention dressed up in hope. Every forever has an asterisk.

Memory, too, is unreliable. You don’t just recall what happened, you recall how you felt about what happened. And feelings shift. So memory does too. Experience stains it, sweetens it, bends it slightly out of shape until it fits the version of ourselves we’ve become.

But still, despite it all… you can’t hate the ones you loved. And you won’t hurt the ones you wronged. Not really. Not with intent. What lingers instead is a quiet wish that things had been different, or maybe just clearer. And the hope that the lives you now live apart are still rich, full, and becoming.

It’s not closure, exactly. Just a sort of gentleness.

A hope for the best.

A prayer for grace.

An unwavering optimism that things *somehow, someway* get better.

Funny how sometimes you arrive only to leave.

But maybe the real lesson is in the knowing that you have what it takes to get there.

And whatever detours you take, if you’ve done it once… you can do it again.

Only this time, better.

Because of everything you’ve learned along the way.

And sometimes, it only takes a footnote to close a chapter.

Love, Vx