Happy Birthday To Me?

My 27th Birthday

I've not written in a diary since I was about 17 or 18 and yet here I find myself ten years later keeping a public diary for the entire world to see... But grown-ups don't keep diaries though do they? Passed adolescence we've got our heads all figured out right; we shouldn't need to write down our feelings to understand them? I suppose I held that viewpoint. Once I left home I was an adult and sitting in my bedroom scribbling down my world views on boys and music seemed trivial. However, If I'm honest, the real reason I stopped writing in my diary is because I was afraid of what I might learn about myself and that I wasn't always happy. We spend a lot of our time trying to show the world that we are happy. On the online diary that is Facebook I don't post pictures of myself crying (heaven forbid) and I try to avoid too many "Woe is me!" statuses because being happy's important.

So this week when my relationship ended I said nothing. I posted lots of pictures of myself smiling. I made plans for my birthday and got on with trying to be happy (okay, there were maybe a few whiney Twitter statuses but nobody pays attention to them *she says convincingly*). And so I'm sitting in my parents spare room so that when I wake up tomorrow I can be surrounded by people who love me with presents, writing in my online diary... 17 year old Clare masquerading in a 27 year old body.

It'd be easy to say not much has changed but it has. I'm definitely a wiser and richer person for all of the experiences life has allowed me to have in the last ten years, the people that have been a part of my life and the love that I've been shown and continue to be shown. And maybe I'm not completely happy as the clock ticks twelve and sends me into my 27th year on this planet but I'm grateful for so many things. Including this little space, my online diary of sorts, because sometimes it just helps to write it down. I hope I never forget that again.