My birthday wanes as I write these words. It has been a good day. Quiet yet full. Prosperous yet homemade. Touch points of people and words and experiences.
Forty is not a crisis for me. It is a celebration. Too many times I didn’t look this far forward. Too often, depression clouded my future. Survival is a slippery fish. I imagine that’s true no matter what you’ve survived; I can really only speak to depression. I’ve had birthdays and other celebratory days in crisis or much too close to feel the good without the bad.
Today I am aware that forty could have also been a crisis. Not the off-comedic, black roses, over-the-hill kind. The depression and anxiety kind. It isn’t and that alone feels improbable. Improbable and delicious.
Having spent so many years struggling not to embrace death, I am in that sweet spot suspended safely after crisis and before mere memory. In that space I dearly wish to extend without end, I get to relish this pretty moment.
And hope for many more moments, just as safe, just as pretty. For myself. For those I love. For you. I want us all to survive. To flourish. To get and keep the help we need. To have the resources that benefit us. To become older and to find that small, improbable fact delicious every single time we remember.
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