Eight two and a half

Over the past few months, I have been feeling a bit meh about my birthday this year, as I will be turning 40.
I always used to consider that as I remember my dad’s 40th and how my mum made a huge deal out of it and it was the first party I went to with adults there. So the fact that it is my turn now feels wrong, it hardly feels like I have been alive for four decades; even if that’s been close on a few occasions.

Feeling it get ever closer makes me nervous and uneasy about it, as I look at some of the things I do and don’t consider myself to be sensible enough to be turning 40. I have made it clear to my parents that I don’t want any fuss over it and they have accepted that fact. Firstly because I don’t want to remind you of it and secondly because it’s the first one without Bella.

Essentially this birthday will mean that I am not young anymore and am now middle-aged; as the average life expectancy of a woman in the UK is 82.5 years old. So give or take a year and a bit it’s middle age here I come, extremely reluctantly. If that wasn’t enough of a reminder that I am getting older I only have to look at my eldest niece who is now an adult herself. I am sat here sort of resigned to this fact and it feels a bit depressing.

But then curiosity struck me about this and when that bipolar part of the brain gets curious there is only one…