Since I can remember I've always looked forward to my birthday :) I've never been one for the fear of ‘getting old'. Instead, I’ve approached each birthday, with the excitement of the beginning of a new chapter; also to take a moment to really reflect and try not to repeat old shit. But for the first time as May 12th was approaching, I was not looking forward to my birthday, I was not looking forward to more change, as all the change prior had been at the time traumatic. If you’re familiar with the quote, ‘your life can change within a moment,’ well boy did I get to experience that..... Prior to my birthday, everything that was the becoming of Vanessa turned into the downfall of Vanessa, personally and professionally. 

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The days approaching my birthday began to draw closer and the dread in my gut began to expand, I'd never felt so bloated. I wasn’t happy with where I was in my life and how uncertain aspects in my life had unravelled into such gloomy conclusions. In the space of one month, I had unexpectedly just come out of a four-year relationship and no words could describe how extremely shit that pain was. I had high hopes and ambitions for our relationship; I never expected the relationship to end, I didn’t want it to end. But I wasn’t going to stay in a relationship where those feelings weren’t mutual, were never mutual. And as painful as it was for me to walk away, I knew deep down I was doing the right thing for me, for us, even though it didn’t feel like the right thing.

 

And then followed the four days before my birthday, I quit my new job.

I can honestly say when shit happens in my life, it always comes in two's. 

It was a huge relief leaving my job as a PA; because I didn't want to work for satan anymore. If someone would ask me what experience I gained from my ex PA role,  I would say  "I had been the victim of racism, sexism and discrimination."  There came a day, where it was just the final straw; I recall driving home and just thinking,  “I DON’T NEED MORE NEGATIVE SHIT IN MY LIFE.”  And the next day, I rang in 'sick' and confirmed my decision that; although being unemployed wasn’t ideal, it was more beneficial being unemployed, searching for a job and having peace of mind, than being in a job where I was served with a daily dose of immense negativity.

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My life felt like the perfect recipe for a rom-com………

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So there I was LITERALLY BACK TO SQUARE ONE; unemployed and single, not exactly where I had envisioned myself at the age of 26, and this situation wasn't exactly motivating me to celebrate my 26th birthday.  After a couple of weeks of pure depression, I was done with being depressed, my feelings were justified but I knew I needed to start really dealing with this predicament that I was in. All I knew was that I didn’t want all this negativity to cause me to fear in facing the now and the future. I started to think about the previous difficulties I had faced in my life and how I had managed to deal with and overcome them. E.g. when I used to detest having butter on my toast, but then I learned to get over that phobia and now I love butter on my toast.

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AND THEN EVERYTHING MAGICALLY GOT BETTER, THE END! Ahh if only it was that simple!

The day of my birthday arrived, my mum had forced me to celebrate with her and some family friends. As sat in an all you can eat Chinese restaurant and I awkwardly blew out the solo candle on some weird icecream cupcake; I was still partly sad, but I was also PARTLY HAPPY because blowing out that candle, was marking blowing out the past and starting a fresh exciting chapter, even though I didn't know it at the time.

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