Changed?

There’s a picture from when I was five, at my Dad’s wedding.
I don’t remember it being taken.
I only really remember sketches of that day – bits of the morning, bits of the ceremony, bits of walking down to the reception, feeling embarrassed when we had to stop every now and then for pictures. The start of the reception. The toys my sister and I got. I still have the owl at home. I don’t know what happened to her doll.
The picture is one I’ve gone past many times, and haven’t always looked at in detail, but even when I do, I don’t think much about it. It’s a nice picture, and in some ways, I look almost exactly the same as I do now, except my hair is much shorter, my face younger and chubbier, and my frame much smaller.
But my expression is the same.
The feeling I get from it is the same as how I feel now.
There were many pictures taken that day.
It was a wedding, pictures are almost always taken at weddings.
I remember some of them, but not this one. I couldn’t say when it was taken, who took it, what they said, what I said. I couldn’t say what happened before, after, and as it was taken. I don’t remember who was around me.
What was I like that day, I wonder? How much have I changed since then? In what ways am I still the same person?
I know who I am now, or mostly, at least, but who was I at the age of five?
In some ways, it feels as though it was another person back then, that I was a different person back then.
But it isn’t, and really, how much have I changed from the little girl I once was? Even after so many years, there are things about me that don’t change, that haven’t changed, that I can’t change.
Instinctual things.
Genetic things.
Thoughts change, and appearance changes, and how you interact with the world changes, but the person you are, the person you’ve always been, does that stay the same? Is it only something drastic that can change who you are, or are the hardships of life enough? Or is the person you are in your core something that rarely changes?
How much do we change over time, really?