Turning 40 !

I have just been reading a friend's post ( Damaria at http://damariasenne.blogspot.com/ ) about turning forty. It lead me to reflecting about my entering my forties!

My birthday is on New Year's day. This meant that instead of always having a birthday party (as most people would think) I missed out and had two actual birthday parties that I can think of, one for my 4th birthday and one for my 21st (which I shared with the daughter of a friend of my mothers who was born on Christmas day) I also got to miss out on the experience of sharing my birthday with my school mates etc and taking cake to school as my birthday was during the holidays...

Anyway, my mother was planning a big party for my 40th, but life kind of tripped us up and threw us some very large painful curve balls. Four months before my birthday, my mother had a massive unexpected heart attack and subsequent "failed" bypass. So she was extremely ill and very frail. Then my 2nd and remaining brother (my eldest brother was killed in a car crash when I was 25) who was running his own safari business in Botswana had a botched emergency appendix operation and ended up with septicaemia and peritonitis. They really battled to save his life, but he succumbed on the 30 November, just a month after his 42nd birthday and a month before my 40th!

Needless to say in the midst of our mourning and grief, and dealing with my mother's health, my actual 40th birthday just kind of slid on by unnoticed and I for one didn't mind at all.

After my birthday however, I got to thinking. I had lost both my brothers and my darling mother had been left with a dodgy prognosis.

I grew up as a sickly very shy child, dated sporadically in my 20's and then I put myself permanently on the shelf and became this dull grey little person 'cos I had a fear of rejection, so I thought it better to totally avoid meeting people in order to prevent it happening!

I had no real life at all, I buried myself in my work, my Church and my family.

Anyway, as said my 2nd brothers death got me to thinking about just how short and unpredictable life could be, and that to avoid the chance of being hurt or rejected by life and people in general, I was just waisting my life, this gift I had been given and was too scared to use.

I kind of had an epiphany!

I decided that I had to let the real me out,the person that most people had never seen and only had the odd glimpses of, the woman that I had buried deep down inside. I was prepared to take the risk of being hurt in doing so!

I changed my life completely! I started dating ( and yes it has been a rather slippery ride ) I experimented with life in a lot of ways, going through stages and doing things I should have done and gone through in my 20's! I made a lot of mistakes and really bad choices which have had some really disastrous consequences and yes, I have been hurt.

My family too have not always been totally understanding and receptive of the "new me". My eldest niece for one, told me blatantly a couple of years back that she didn't like the new me and wanted the old one back, and I had to say " so sorry baby, she has gone forever!" You see in my non-identity / life, I only lived for and through my family and was a doormat totally at the beck and call of my family, so of course the didn't like it that part of the change was me saying "sorry can't do it, have my own things to do!"

But ...

For all that, what a glorious ride it has been and continues to be! I would take the pain of failed relationships, and jobs and mistaken decisions etc all over again to be as alive as I am now.

In my 40s I am the most mature and confident person I have ever been. I am for the most part, at last a person that I like and think is good to be around!

I don't need a specific birthday party, to celebrate me, I am doing so by just living my life

Life is life, and she can be a bitch of note at times but for the most part it is a glorious ride!

I can only wish you a wonderful glorious 40's experience Sam, and I promise to lead you astray somehow in celebration!!!!!

I think nobody can sum up better how I feel than the immortal Shel Silverstein:

"Draw a crazy picture, Write a nutty poem, Sing a mumble gumble song, Whistle through your comb. Do a loony goony dance 'cross the kitchen floor. Put something silly in the world that ain't been there before." ~Shel Silvertein ~