The nineteenth day of the fourth month of the year nineteen eighty nine

Last year I spent my birthday in Essex. I was mentally ill without really knowing it, thinking I'd got over the obvious mental illness because I wasn't self harming outwardly. 

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. 

All the voices in my mind/Calling out across the line

I spent most of this weeks counselling session railing against birthdays.
"Why do I get presents and attention? It's my mum that did all the hard work!"
And today when the office suddenly burst into chorus of happy birthday, it took me a moment to realise I was included in the song along with the other two people having their birthday this weekend. I had automatically started singing to them. 

I didn't want the singing to be for me.

When pressed to consider why, the answer is simple: I want to feel special, but when the spotlight is shone on me I don't feel I deserve it. 
This isn't restricted to birthdays. This is all the time. I don't want the spotlight on me for anything, despite wanting to feel appreciated, acknowledged and special, because I'm terrified that if the spotlight shines too bright people will see what I'm really worth.

Which, in my mind, is nothing.
Or at least very little. 

And yet I keep going. What for? If I consider my life so futile, so worthless, what reason do I have to keep doing everything I'm doing?

Because I'm trying to find my worth. I'm trying to earn it. Even though I know that if I earn success and achievements I won't automatically feel ok and like my life is worth something. 
That isn't something that will happen with one achievement, one success. 
That has to be worked on and happen gradually and continuously forever. 

Part of this comes from realising this is my first birthday without my granddad. 5 and a half months on I'm still mourning, and lately I've been preoccupied with worrying whether or not I'm making him proud. 
How you can make a deceased loved one proud is something I haven't worked out yet...

It fascinates me that I, and most of humankind, feel entitled to happiness. Is that a symptom of a world with ever increasing challenges despite our ever improving technology and services? Or is this a primitive instinct?

Is it one that can ever be achieved? Do we ever win the the race of the pursuit of happiness?

I look down at my tanned legs, and see the bright white scars highlighted by the pigmentation from sun exposure. The scars stand out so much brighter against the darkened backdrop. I looked at them earlier, and I cried. I cried and I cried, and then I smiled.

The challenge for me is to recognise that these scars, that I caused, are not a sign of weakness. Instead, they are a sign that I have survived, against the odds that I stack against myself.

Constantly saying "I'm worried about... I worry about..." isn't because I over-anxious necessarily. I do need to relax and calm down and accept the flow a bit more but it also shows that I care. I'm allowed to care. But not so much it makes me ill.

And I need to accept that the spotlight shines on me one day a year, for reasons I find unnecessary, and it's ok to be uncomfortable with that. For at least one day a year, people think I am worth celebrating, because I was lucky to be born and and to some extent lucky to still be here, but with gritted teeth and no lack of trying, I have stuck it out for 26 years. 

I'll take it. Here's to birthdays: The day you get to celebrate your mother's reproductive organs! 

Learning Curves

This weekend I have achieved one New Year's Resolution, and failed one.

I have 'achieved" going on the Bluebell Railway.

Here's me with a glass of champers in the Chelmwood carriage of the Wealden Rambler, travelling from Sheffield Park to East Grinstead.

And I failed to complete my 'Before 24' list.

The state of my 'To Do Before I'm 24' list when I turned 24:
- Play Monopoly
- Visit Belfast
- Learn how to light a BBQ
- Learn how to mow the lawn
- Get 4th tattoo
- Get a credit card

I played Monopoly for about an hour before I became a bit of a sore loser and didn't want to play anymore.

I applied for a credit card and got rejected - no surprise, as I was unemployed at the time. Now I'm too scared to apply again. I will try before I leave the country.

Claire and I tried to learn how to light a BBQ on Thursday night (my birthday eve). We didn't really succeed. At all. Ah well. We gave it a go.



Another year older, and another year wiser.
Well, another year older.




Things I've learned in the last year:
- I am gifted (in a very special, impossible way) at knitting
- How to live with my father
- How to live without my mother
- I love working in casting
- Plymouth has it's own version of the London Eye
- Alcohol is banned in Monument Valley
- What it's like to be on the other side of depression
- My sister isn't fluent in Italian
- Pubs in Belfast kick out at about half midnight

Things I haven't learned in the last year:
- What alcohol goes into a New Orleans Hand Grenade
- To knit properly (i.e conventionally) and without adding or dropping stitches with every row
- How to successfully light a BBQ
- How to make hummus without a blender
- How to make the perfect banana bread
- How to control my chocolate habit