The big 40. I thought I was mentally prepared for it. I was so wrong.

My birthdays were never really fond to me. When they rolled around, I often chose to ignore them, waiting for them to quietly slide by. As much as I love finding myself at a random party, in the company of my friends and/or relatives, birthdays were never really something I wanted to celebrate with anything other than a whole day of isolation from the outside world, rolling around on the couch, sleeping and waking up at random throughout the day.

I don’t know why, but every time my birthday comes around, dark thoughts begin to haunt me. Not because I’d be scared of growing old or worried because of an extra wrinkle, but mostly because birthdays always drive me into deep introspection. I delve into the deepest corners of my consciousness and just start thinking and thinking and …

I think about how time flies. I think about how the number that now represents my current age surprises me. Every time, it catches me unprepared, as if I didn’t know. As if I somehow forgot how old I am. I think about how many of my wishes I have managed to realize in the past year. What have I achieved and what slipped by once again. What did I change for the better in my life, if anything at all. What changed for the worse? I think about the people around me and if I did enough for them. Did I do enough for myself? And I often don’t like the answers I find. In this self-inflicted thought process I always find myself at the crossroad of disappointment and melancholy. A mixture, which is best enjoyed at home, on the couch. If nothing else, I can at least find out how I manage to step into these mental traps every single birthday.

However, for the past couple of birthdays, I felt it was fine if I let people congratulate me in person. So I spoke to a friend of mine, who also has her birthday on the same month as I do, and we have decided to just organize one big party at the end of that month for all and everybody to actually have something happen for my birthday. And with these parties we went big. We did it properly.

After all, this was a double-birthday party. That never happened on my or my friend’s actual birthday, but a couple of weeks later. With an excuse, that in the middle of August, people were away on holidays anyway. So we planned it later. Usually right at the end of the month, when people were home, freshly tanned but not just yet ready to go to work, and at the same time, I have already managed to dig myself out of those unhappy thoughts and – at least for another year – accepted my existing reality. And the new age number that came with it.

What kind of reality was it? Painless, actually. Just nibbling endlessly somewhere deep in my mind, reminding me how much of my life has already gone. How little time I have left to linger and explore and make mistakes and try to find out what’s right or wrong. At this point I should know where I am and why I am where I am. But I can’t, for the life of me, tell you that I know.

So, for now, I am accepting the fact that I am still learning. Still figuring stuff out. Now maybe more than ever before. I do, after all, have a lot more knowledge and so many different understandings of who I am and what I want. However, in this search and in this battle for my own principles, that inevitably comes with it, the opportunity to celebrate my 40th birthday – slipped by. With all that was happening in my life, all these sudden processes of cleaning both my social and my mental world, all these changes that started happening, my usual plans got flipped upside down. And with that, my annual birthday party just never happened.

It did cross my mind a couple of times in that August. Should I have it? If I did, I felt it would have been forced. It wouldn’t have been honest. It wouldn’t have been right. It would have been a party that happened because of tradition and my own stubbornness. Which doesn’t really sound like a foundation for a good party. When things are back the way I want them, when I’ll feel that I have something else to celebrate than me getting naturally older, the party will happen.

Maybe for my 41st birthday? Oh, wait, maybe the pandemic measures will say ‘no’ instead of me this time around. 😊