Birthday

In two days’ time it will be my birthday, and at three o'clock in the afternoon, three-quarters of the way through a French written language seminar, I will turn twenty-two. I am dreading it, just as I dreaded the last four or five birthdays preceding it.

This, I am aware, is not a socially accepted attitude. Some friends tell me to go out, dance, drink. Others tell me to go out for a meal, at least. My boyfriend tells me I’m being ridiculous. I tell myself there’s not really enough time to organise anything now, and nobody else will have the time anyway, now that our final semester has started, but that irritating voice of truth I try to ignore tells me shortly that I am in fact hiding from myself. Hiding what exactly? The things I don’t want to acknowledge. My fear that I haven’t achieved enough to justify another year of life. My memories of happy birthdays past, far from here, when we were all the same but different. And, worst of all, the unshakeable feeling that as I grow older, I lose more and more control over my life. It spins away from me like a ball of wool, rolling into dark, dusty corners, unravelling, twisting, fraying, and all I am clutching is one futile thread.

What am I celebrating, exactly? The fact that I have survived another year of life? Looking back on everything that has happened in the past twelve months, that may actually be something to acknowledge. But I am afraid to do just that, because it hurts. I may have succeeded in terms of solid achievements- jobs, courses, deadlines- but under this thin web of connecting threads I am a woman-child, cowering in the corner to escape the predator in my mind like a little girl nestles under the covers, hiding from monsters under the bed. The only difference now, here, is that my monster is my mind.

Last night, unexpectedly, an unwanted memory crept through the shutters and infiltrated my mind like a shadow. I was in a Parisian office; my eyes burned in the flickering amber of the artificial light. Mechanically I settled into a rotating chair, before my-desk-that-was-not-mine, and sat before an unlit computer screen for a dim, weary eternity. All at once a group of faceless figures flocked to me, drowning me in a sea of papers, and I knew I had failed. I hadn’t done my time. My year abroad would not count. I had failed the entire year of university through getting my boot caught in an unforeseen administrative loophole. I awoke desolate in the violet-grey dawn, watching the limbs of the trees seep like ink drawings into the muted white parchment of the ceiling.

At the end of the day, I suppose, it all boils down to this. Everything in my life can be sorted into two distinct categories: ‘Before All This’ and ‘Now’. ‘Before All This’ is one long sun-drenched fairy tale. It is cake and daisies and wiggling a loose tooth with the tip of my tongue. It is reading under the covers, sleepovers at friends’ houses, parties, holidays, first love. It is physical illnesses which can be cured magically in two days with something out of a bottle, and pain that is superficial and short-lived- a stomach-ache, a grazed knee. It is like a photo album which is suddenly slammed shut. Dust clouds puff out, little glittering specks of a life once lived; but one-dimensional. They settle on the ground, not numerous enough to form even the thinnest layer. They are the ‘Now’. I have done enough, seen enough people with various titles, taken enough different pills to know that this is my lot, this is my future. Until I am strong enough to accept this, to bravely shoulder the burden which is my almost-life, I cannot hope to welcome the advent of another year of life.

I’m not sure why I have written this. I don’t know what to make of it myself. But I have, in some minute way, begun to unwrap this complex parcel of emotions and thoughts, unpacking it piece by piece. I know that the tasks of stacking it away neatly and dealing with the mess left behind will be arduous; a work I will be completing for many birthdays to come. I know that I am not how I should be, not how I truly was; but maybe I can be better.

For now, I will simply try to be patient with myself. And that will be my birthday gift to me.