Leopards etc.

Who says anything really changes? Olga and I had a discussion last night - she was bemoaning her continued inability to deal effectively with the fantasy-reality gap, specifically in relation to her crush on Heinrich.... She says at her age she should be able to deal with crushes better. I said that I still deal with mine more or less like I did when I was 12, and that if there'd been no change in the past 17 years of my life, I didn't see why anything would change now. She conceded - we concluded that we were both better at identifying our problems, naming them, seeming effective in the world despite them...but that essentially we were still feeling the same things as we pretty much always have done.

On the up-side, I had my appraisal today at work. It was quite amazing how similar Giovanni's report on me was to my school reports from ... er, well ... when I was 12. Readily accepts new responsibilites... leadership potential... underselling.... All extremely nice, and a great ego-boost so early in the morning, but just soooo reminiscent of those school reports!

So, I'm not quite sure what to think. Was there any time at which I could have changed my spots? Have my spots really stayed the same, pretty much, all this time?! How can that be?! I thought - hoped? - that I'd changed, since there are so many aspects of myself that I dislike (the crushing, the this-is-definitely-not-my-room, the inappropriate manifestations of my "leadership potential"...). Maybe I hoped I'd get better. But I guess all of us have malformed spots, unfinished circles, blemishes, birthmarks, scars, that we tote around with us. Maybe all any of us can really hope for is knowing what spots we've got, and how they might join up.