Dearest,

Tonight I was re-reading my earliest letters to you, and I think I used to be so much more positive and joyful back then. Lately I've been more pensive... but also, I think, sharing more deeply about my thoughts and feelings.

I also noticed that I've repeated myself in a few of the letters. Well, they were written over a period of time, and I keep forgetting what I have and haven't told you, so, sorry lah, just skim over the recurring bits, will ya? ;)

It strikes me that I'm no longer the same bubbly girl who started off writing these letters to you. It's been more than three years since I wrote the first letter, and so many things have happened, things that have shaped my thinking, my perceptions, my dreams & desires, my fears and doubts. I've changed. I would like to think I've changed for the better, but I'm not entirely sure. I just know that I'm different.

If it weren't for these letters and for my blog, I probably wouldn't even notice the changes. Change is such an insidious thing. It creeps up on us slowly, and we don't realise its subtle influence as it carves away at us day by day. Then one day we wake up and it hits us that, hey, something is very different! How did I get this way?! -- and the cumulative effect of change abruptly becomes very visible to our newly-opened eyes.

Oh well, at least I have not been stagnant, as I had half-feared. So many times during these past few years I've felt caught in a never-ending cycle of sameness and felt like I was doomed to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, that nothing would ever change no matter how hard I tried to improve. I guess this is a good reminder that the baby steps do matter, even if they are almost unnoticeable at any given moment. Perhaps in another one or two years' time I'll look back again and marvel that yes, I have changed for the better, in more ways than I ever believed I would.

I hope so not just for my own sake, but for yours too! Coz you're the one who's going to be living with me, you know :P