Another October

 

October is almost halfway through, and I find myself looking at the sixteenth with a peculiar reluctance, as though there is something waiting for me on that date that I'm not entirely prepared to face.

It's my birthday.

There was a time when those words carried a certain excitement, when growing older meant moving closer to the life I had imagined for myself. A life filled with familiar faces, people who stayed, and the comforting certainty that I belonged somewhere, to someone.

I cannot quite remember when I stopped expecting that life to arrive.

Perhaps it happened gradually, through a succession of ordinary disappointments, the sort that don't necessarily break your heart but quietly teach you to expect a little less each time.

And before you know it, you've become a woman who asks for almost nothing, yet somehow still feels disappointed when nothing comes.

I don't think I'm unhappy. At least, not all the time. There are days when I genuinely enjoy my own company, when solitude feels like a luxury rather than something I've reluctantly inherited. But there are evenings when the silence becomes difficult to ignore, and I wonder whether I've mistaken being accustomed to loneliness for actually being content with it.

Last week, N lost his little girl, and since then I've found myself thinking about the peculiar cruelty of time, how some of us quietly dread another birthday while others would give anything for someone they love to have just one more.

It makes my little disappointments seem terribly insignificant.

And yet, they remain.

Perhaps that's the strange thing about being human. We can recognise the suffering of others, love them deeply, wish desperately for their happiness, and still carry our own small sadness without quite knowing where to put it.

So, what do I wish for this birthday?

I suppose I want the ordinary things I've spent years pretending I don't particularly need. A little tenderness. A reason to look forward to tomorrow. Someone who finds happiness in my happiness, without needing to be told how much it would mean to me.

Mostly, I want to stop feeling as though the loveliest parts of my life have already happened.

I want to believe there are still people I haven't met, places I haven't seen, and ordinary afternoons that will one day become memories I'll wish I could return to.

Perhaps that's enough to wish for.

16 October.

Another year of being here, of trying, of loving people, and occasionally forgetting to love myself with the same generosity.

I hope this year will be different.

Not extraordinary.

Just a little gentler with me.

ZA