Don’t mind me. Just over here marvelling over the fact that you can feel multiple, wildly-juxtaposing emotions at once. And then marvelling again, over the fact that that’s normal.
I’m into my last few days of being 36 and I’m wondering how that’s happened. I have very little memory of my 22nd birthday. So how can I be about to turn 37? Reader, we do this dance every November.
Do you know what, 36 has been hard. I’ve been through a lot these last 15 years but perhaps never more so than the last twelve months. I wouldn’t change a thing about having the hysterectomy. But that hasn’t meant that it hasn’t been challenging. Surgical menopause really is quite something, and yet in some ways it’s not as bad as I’d feared or thought or read about.
I’d do it again, but it continues to be a rollercoaster of an endurance event. Gratitude in-amongst the grief, as per usual with this life.
Happiness and sadness. Despair and joy. Patience and frustration. Fear and nonchalance.
So much of my life has stayed the same since that barely-remembered 22nd birthday. And yet so much has changed! I’m 15 years in now and hand on heart, I wouldn’t change it. What a bafflingly absurd thing to say about a life like mine. Yet there we have it.
It’s a different life but it’s my life and I won’t, and don’t, hate it.
IMAGE: A cup and saucer on a colourful footstool, infront of woodburner
'M.E. myself and I' by Anna Redshaw 