27 Pippas in a Trench Coat

I've been thinking a lot recently, which as you know, for a person like me can be quite dangerous.

I've been thinking about what makes me, me.

I've been thinking about all the Pippas I used to be, and somehow all the Pippas I still am. I think there are about 27 of us masquerading as one Pippa in a trench coat.

I mean, there's:

The daughter.
The granddaughter.
The sister.
The school friend.
The newlywed.
The new mum.
The aunt.
The receptionist.
The radio presenter.

Today is my 25th wedding anniversary, which means that sitting in my home is a man who has lived life with me since I was 22, known me since I was 20.

And I think that... well, I think that's worrying if I'm honest.

He remembers the 22-year-old newlywed. He remembers the mother with small children. He remembers Mummy Blogger Pippa before she had awards on the shelf... He remembers versions of me that don't exist anywhere other than photographs and memories. His memories of me.

And that seems unfair.

Unfair, because I look back at all those mes and I don't recognise me.

But of course, he's not just been Mr PippaD whilst I've been collecting different aspects of myself. No, there are probably just as many versions of him in his trench coat... and I recognise all of them too.

I think this is what a long relationship gives you.

Someone who knows you.
Someone who knows every version of you.
Someone who loves every version of you... even if they didn't like that version of you.

Someone who can remind you that the Pippa you were then and the Pippa you are now are not so different.

They are just evolutions.

And I think that's what makes it feel unfair. I don't always recognise the evolutions of myself.

There's a photo that they use every so often at the gym when they are promoting a social, and I'm in that photo. I'll see the image on the screen and recognise my friends, recognise the bar, and then I see a woman and I think, who is that? She looks familiar, but I can't quite place her...

And then I realise. It's me.

Is it because I've changed dramatically in weight or shape?
Is it because I carry myself differently?

Is it because I am different?

But that can't be.

Over the last week or so I've picked up threads of the past me and given them a little bit of a tug.

I've pulled back the Pippa who blogs (hello!), the Pippa who has a podcast, the Pippa who writes, the Pippa who thinks about the most ridiculous of things.

And I think that perhaps the strangest thing about all of this is the more I've pulled, the more I've realised that none of these different versions of me were different Pippas.

I've been reading things that I wrote ten, fifteen, twenty years ago.

I thought that it would be like reading somebody else and it doesn't.

Sure, she's younger and her life is different. She's not married, then she is. She's a mother of young children. She worries about different things and she has absolutely no idea about what life is going to throw at her...

But she's me.

She's making the same stupid jokes and wondering about things that nobody asked her to wonder about.

She's scared, and she's excited. She's up and she's down.

She's thinking about tarmac at one point, and she goes on to explain all the details of macadam. Why on earth was she thinking about tarmac?

Then again, this morning I was thinking about removing moss from paving blocks.

Apparently I've always been like this.

It doesn't feel like I've been finding old versions of myself anymore.

I think that maybe, just maybe, I've been finding the evidence that they never really went away.

In this coat is a little girl who worried she'd never be quite like everyone else. There's teenage Pippa who thought she knew exactly what Future Pippa was going to do with her life. There's the 22-year-old Pippa who married her best friend. There's the mum, the blogger, the radio presenter, the runner. The woman who occasionally looks at photographs of herself and wonders who the heck she is looking at.

All of them.
All of us.

I've changed so much, and yet. I've not changed at all.

All of us, all the versions of me, past, present and future, we're here in this trench coat and always will be.