Instead I was obsessing over food and exercise in a way that would come and take a total grip on me later in the year. I still enjoyed my birthday weekend, with people who I was incredibly close to. Despite irrevocably losing one of those people since then, I look upon that weekend with fond memories.
This year, I am physically ill. I have a cold. I'm coughing and spluttering and the nausea from the catarrh is nasty.
But you only get one birthday a year.
I'm nearer to 30 than 20. When was my life supposed to start? Can I take on the mantle of a millennial who still lives with her father because rent is too high, who is still trying to "find herself" and has already discovered the person she's meant to be cannot be found in Australia, New Zealand, Europe or America? Nor was she is Brazil, and she's unlikely to be in Vietnam, Dubai, Thailand, Mexico or any other country on the bucket list.
Who has a bucket list at 27?
I like having a spring birthday because as I travel home from work (I was sent home because people don't want my germs) the green of the trees lining the tracks are bright, and radiating hope. Hope for a plentiful year.
I've now lived 9 years 3 times.
And every other day of my life I feel like I haven't done enough. I'm not doing enough.
I'm not being enough.
But that's the great thing about birthdays that I don't think I appreciated until now, until today:
On your birthday it's enough just being you.
