Content Warning: This section features discussions of suicide.

The Seven Year Slip is first and foremost a story about change, an obstacle for both major characters. For most of the story, Clementine has trouble differentiating changes for the worse and personal growth and development. She herself feels stuck in time, much like her Aunt Analea, who resisted change to the point of losing her lover to the passing of time. Some of this resistance to change is ingrained in her personality, and some of it is a result of the death of her aunt, a prominent influence in her life. She is afraid to move into the apartment she inherited because she still sees it as her aunt’s apartment rather than her own. Instead, Clementine seeks out security and stability through her job, ignoring her changing feelings toward it in favor of keeping this part of her life the same.

When she meets Iwan in the present and sees the ways he has changed over seven years, Clementine wants to tell him “I met you in my time, and you’re so different [...] I don’t know why you changed. I don’t know how [...] I don’t know you at all” (146).