I love everything about birthdays.
I love giving gifts (even though I stress out over finding the perfect one), attending parties, singing Happy Birthday, watching the candles blow out, celebrating that another person I love has been in my life for another year.
June is my favorite month. It's my mom's birthday, my sister's birthday, one of my oldest and dearest friend's birthday, Father's Day, the anniversary of when I first laid eyes on my husband, the beginning of summer...and of course, my birthday. I have always loved June 5. I love the month, I love the day, I love that I share a birthday weekend with my mom and that my sister's day is right around the corner. I truly do feel special on my birthday, no matter where I am, because I have an amazing and loving extended family and every year we all call each other on our birthdays, and I look forward to those calls every year (and in the last 8 years, the Facebook posts!) Last year I got to do something really cool on my birthday and celebrate the coming birth of my honorary nephew at a good friend's baby shower. I love birthdays.
So why am I not excited about this one?
25 is a slightly notable birthday. I can rent a car without hassle. So that's cool. And it's a quarter of a century! That's pretty neat! But I spent last night tossing and turning, wondering why I was not excited for my birthday this year. As I write this blog post, I still can't really put my finger on it.
Maybe it is because I'm starting a new quarter of life and it is going to be drastically different than the first quarter. (Which is silly, because it's not like there's a guarantee I'm living until 100! I can't possibly know what year of my life is the first of a new quarter!) Years 0-24 were all about growing, changing, figuring out who I am, a real big giant focus on me. Years 25-50 are going to be very different and maybe I'm just worried about messing them up. I have a lot of regrets in my first 25 years and I don't want that for me this time around and I'm scared that I won't be strong enough to make the changes that I really want to make. It's a good thing I have a life partner this time around :)
On my birthday tomorrow, I plan to do a couple new things I have been putting off for months and months because of fear, but I plan to make my 25th birthday the start of some new changes. I also promise to wake up tomorrow with a smile on my face as I start, what I consider to be, a new phase of my life's journey. Because if I'm not trying to move forward, then I am just swimming in place. And that is incredibly exhausting. And as Walt Disney said, "If nothing changed, there'd be no butterflies."
