Tomorrow, I’ll be 41. Another 940 million kilometers travelled on this rock in space we call home. Birthdays are funny like that — arbitrary markers on the calendar that ask us to pause, reflect, and take stock. For me, it’s less about time itself and more about the strange ritual of looking back while moving forward, trying to make sense of where I’ve been and where I’m going. I’ve always fought the passage of time in one way or another (It’s literally why I got obsessed with physics), so dates that force me to acknowledge it and take stock of it, never really get on well with my wanting time to stand still.

This year, reflection feels heavier. It’s not just my being completely resistant to the passage of time — it’s everything that comes with it. Grief, mental illness, and the ways life doesn’t always cooperate with celebrations. Birthdays, for me, aren’t just about cake or candles; they’re about reckoning with what the year has brought, and sometimes, what it’s taken away.

Grief Reflection

Being 41 feels so wrong. It’s the first time I’ll be older than WeeGee, my best friend, was when she died. She was always ahead of me — in age, in recovery, in life — and it felt like she’d always be there, shining her wisdom down on me like an elder in our little community. She wasn’t just my friend; she was the person I could turn to with my problems, knowing she’d have some wry, thoughtful, or downright brilliant thing to say that would make me feel seen and understood. She was my anchor when I felt adrift.

WeeGee had a way of making me feel special, despite the fact I had been a complete stranger to feeling special previously. I don’t have extended family — it’s always been just my teen and me — but she filled that gap effortlessly. She didn’t just make me feel like I had family; she was my family. We shared an unconditional love I didn’t think I’d ever have, and it changed me.

We were like little penguins, sending shiny gifts and treasures that reminded us of each other. For my birthday, she’d send a carefully arranged box of goodies — things so thoughtfully chosen and so very her. It wasn’t just the gifts; it was the message behind them: ‘You’re awesome, and you’re loved.’ She wanted me to see myself the way she saw me, and every year, she tried to get me to believe in myself just a little more.

This year, there’s no box from WeeGee waiting for me, but her gifts are still here — in my memories, in the way she made me feel loved, and the little trinkets dotted around my flat. Even though the grief is sharp and unrelenting, I can still hear her voice telling me I’m awesome, and I hold onto that. Her love is still with me, and that matters.

Mental Illness Reflections

This year, like every year, has been shaped by mental illness. Losing my best friend brought my struggles into sharper focus, but the truth is, mental illness doesn’t leave. It’s a constant companion, woven into the background of my life.

Now, turning 41 has brought with it a big fog of depression, and I’m really struggling. Why does it feel even more unfair when it’s your birthday? The void doesn’t care about celebrations. It doesn’t honour milestones or special days — it just sits there, timeless, trying to pull me in.

What I’ve come to realise, though, is that this — still struggling, still fighting, still showing up — is what healing looks like. Healing isn’t a cure. It isn’t an end to the pain or a clean break from the past. Healing is living with it, carrying it, and finding ways to move forward even when it’s heavy.

I’ve been dealing with mental illness for 34 years, and some days it feels like nothing has changed. I can pick up a journal from 20 years ago and see the same thoughts, the same fears, the same struggles staring back at me as I am experiencing today. But here’s the thing: when I keep reading, I see it — I have healed. I’ve grown in ways that aren’t loud or dramatic. I’ve become a person who keeps going, who finds moments of joy and love, even in the darkest times.

Healing doesn’t look like it does on Instagram. It’s not a sunset with a script font promising transformation — I really wish it was that simple. Instead, it’s often stigmatising, making you feel like you’re doing it all wrong because you still have the same diagnosis. “I must be healing wrong; I still have a severe mental illness. What am I doing wrong?” Spoiler alert: absolutely nothing. The whole idea that healing equals curing is just another lie – just like the cake is in Portal. For me, healing is showing up for my teen when my brain is rioting. It’s surviving an eating disorder relapse, even when recovery feels like an endless loop. It’s learning to live with and accept grief and mental illness, knowing they cant be grown or healed out of but also knowing they don’t define all of me.

This is what healing looks like for me. Not perfect, not cured, still struggling, but alive. And that still counts.

Birthday Reflection Conclusion

I know there will still be joy on my birthday, and you can count on me to post all of the joys I experience too. But today, I’m sitting with these reflections, sitting with the void, letting myself exist as I am, because that’s where my mental health has brought me right now.

While I light a candle for myself on my birthday cake — which I’ll wrestle with eating or not eating, thanks to my ED, and think far too much about how the cake is a lie, thanks to Portal — I’ll also light a candle for WeeGee. In that way, she can be a light on my birthday too, though even a glowing candle is dimmer than the light she shone on me when she was alive.

Who knows maybe next year, I’ll finally have it all figured out. After all, 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

This seemed an appropriate song to leave on this post given the Portal references, and the fact it’s called “Still Alive”.