ITS MY BIRTHDAY .....

Today is June 30th and that can mean only one thing, it’s my birthday!

It’s a special one this year though, for 2014 is the penultimate year of my thirties and this time in 2015 will mark the dawn of a whole new era for me as the body clock of my life ticks over into 40.

Of course you know you’re starting to advance in years when your childhood heroes and icons either start passing away or getting arrested for dubious reasons and although I know some of you quietly dread that landmark birthday that signals we’re just not that young anymore, but I , myself am secretly quite looking forward to it.

For while these days a night out will require a week’s worth of recovery and any overzealous dance moves could possibly result in a month spent in traction there’s a lot to be said for starting to get on a bit.

When I look back at the shy and self conscious young woman I was in my teens and twenties it’s hard to believe she’s even the same girl as me anymore.

The girl who would do anything to please everybody except herself, who wanted no hassle so just agreed to anything to avoid any confrontation because she knew she could be reduced to tears if she did.

Who was so afraid of humiliating herself in front of others she would go out of her way to avoid any situation in which she might do that and in doing so prevented her from ever feeling truly happy with her life and self .

However she’s just a thing of the past these days because sometime during her thirties something changed and that poor little weedy thing ceased to exist .

I don’t know what caused it or whether perhaps the “ don’t give a monkeys what other people think of me anymore “ fairy fluttered down and delivered it one night when I was asleep along with the grey hairs and wrinkles but I’m pretty grateful wherever it came from.

For that timid little thing gradually started to wriggle and emerge from the cocoon of her old self to reveal a much stronger , confident and sure version of herself than she had ever been before.

She started to express her own opinions and stand by them , stopped letting everyone walk over her and as for bursting into tears that only tends to happen in really sad situations or when observing anything that involves children or cute wildlife now.

 And as for the confrontation, she gives as good as she gets these days and should the suggestion of humiliating herself even be made to her over anything she or someone else think she’s incapable of she takes that as a challenge to prove she can do it.

 

So if the sight of that big 4-0 looming over the horizon is getting you down and you think that all you have left to look forward to is the menopause swiftly followed by half price fish and chip suppers and free bus passes think again because as far as I’m concerned if my thirties have been this good to me then I can’t wait to see what my forties will bring.

And if things haven’t worked out quite as well as you’d hoped they would ,just remember you still have time to change it, after all isn’t that what the mid life crisis was invented for !