It's my birthday

(well technically it was yesterday but I was too tired and hungover to post this so here it is. Fashionably late, as is my birthday prerogative)

I walked home along the canal this evening. The sky was a delicious hue of dusty pink with patches of peach like a big smear of cheap ice cream. The air was thick and warm but not sticky, it’s too early in the season for that, but it was hot enough to wear a t-shirt at 10pm which is the best kind of heat. The sort of weather you can to melt into- into the pavement, into the marshmallow sky, into the delightful softness of being. I walked along the canal and absorbed the buzz emanating from the mass of souls in cargo shorts and knock off Miu-Miu’s smoking rollies.

When you’re 18, the idea that you might one day be old enough to look at other 18 year olds with a maternal fondness is unthinkable. To be THAT OLD is unthinkable. Yet here I am, watching two eighteen year olds desperately try and nonchalantly exist around their peers. They got ready together, I can tell by the mismatched-matchy-ness of their hipster jeans and tank tops. Variations on a theme supported by emphatic nods and Charli XcX on the speakers. I don’t know these two girls but I adore them. Not in patronising way I hope. I adore them for their attempts at being. The bravery with which they are branching out from the parental wings and trying on different costumes of adulthood.

I’m turning 36 in two days. Once upon a time I would have referred to 36 as “the wrong side of your thirties” because it’s the side that is closer to 40. And there is no right side of 40, there is just 40, which is all wrong. This is back when 36 was synonymous with school pick ups and SAGA cruises. Back when I thought Bella Italia was the height of sophistication and Russel Brand was still cool. Tonight slumbering up the canal I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for this coming birthday. To this foray into the wrong side of my thirties. This might be an insufferable thing to hear but it is true and I’m not sure what else I can do except acknowledge it.

That isn’t to say that everything is saccharin perfect. It’s not, my back hurts and there is a man urinating on my door step. But the sight of a stranger’s pee as it pools around the entry to my home isn’t enough to dampen my spirits. I feel deeply grateful for the all the decisions that have led to me wandering up to a flat I love, in a city I love and stepping over a puddle of urine on my way to the kettle.

I know my life won’t always feel this bright, there will be inevitable grief, that I have been spared so far but that I know is coming. There will be decisions that I will have to make or that will be made for me. Like whether or not I’ll be a mother? Or what the menopause will feel like? Or if I suit a pixie cut? The usual quiet hum of anxiety that rhythms our days. But even that is not enough to quiet the pulsating warmth I feel this evening.

Being a childless woman who lives on her own, in a rented flat, at 36 years old wasn’t on my bingo card of happiness. Yet here I am, curled up on my sofa, Roland Garros in the background with a mug of Earl Grey next to me and I know there isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be. No version of this which would feel more fulfilling. I don’t think there is a spot, in any universe, that is better suited to the shape of my current being than this.

I’m sharing this not to gloat but because I’m surprised by own contentment and the unexpected place it has come from. I have no wisdom to impart or “things I wish I knew when I was 26” to share, except an observation; It feels to me that trying on costumes of adulthood isn’t something we should ever stop doing. That you don’t need to be Brat, wear crop tops and cargo shorts to revisit the ways in which we choose to exist and continue to find the excitement in it.

A 36 year old woman.