Older and wiser (fingers crossed)

It's my birthday today, so I'm now officially 43, after thinking ahead to it for at least half the previous year. This happens every year; probably by tomorrow I'll be thinking ahead to 44, and after a few months it'll feel like I'm already there, so by the time the next birthday rolls around, it'll be time to skip ahead another year...

Way back in the Year Dot I started a birthday tradition of weeping and wailing:


and have kept it up ever since, replacing the crying with trying to weasel out of accepting Happy Birthdaynesses and other embarrassing attentions by just not telling anybody-who-doesn't-already-know just when my birthday is. This strategy worked quite well actually, except that it always felt like what it was: fear and avoidance, trying to escape from something, hiding away, and on the days when I should have been celebrating the fact I've been given my own life on this planet, not doing so.

Silly. Yeah, I'm an idiot. But that's all right. One day I might grow out of it. (Yay.)