Today is my birthday! I’m 52 and another year older…happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Jacqueline, happy birthday to me…hahahahaha.

I can honesty say that I’m actually enjoying getting older, because for me aging has come with a lot more wisdom, self knowing and happiness.

But it wasn’t always easy for me to celebrate my birthday or be quite so open about my age.

So I’ve decided to dedicate this birthday post, to reflecting a little on my life journey so far, focusing particularly on how my attitude towards getting older has changed over the years.

When I was young, I couldn’t wait to get older…I remember counting the birthdays until I would be 16 because to me 16 was the age when I couldn’t be considered a child anymore.

And when I turned 16, I thought I knew it all, I remember feeling so grown up and adult.

I fought everyone to have my voice heard and my opinions valued—but I suppose part of this was wanting to prove that I did really know stuff, that I wasn’t a child with childish views anymore.

Of course I knew nothing, but thought I knew everything—but honestly how much could I have known? I was just beginning life.

Slowly the thrill of getting older started to fade after about the age of 21—until the thought of aging became an unspoken fear for me.

When I hit 30 it really did feel like it was downhill from here and by the time I hit 40 getting older had become an absolute nightmare.

In my early twenties age didn’t matter, I was studying my first degree, going to Polytechnic with lots of other students around my own age, I was partying, having fun and living a carefree life.

But by the time I got to 30, the game had begun to significantly change.

In the preceding 8 to 10 years most of my home friends and the friends I went to Poly with had started settling down to have families, meanwhile I was still exploring my sexuality—I’ll leave the ins and outs of this for another post!

So on the one hand I was very conscious that my proverbial body clock had started ticking—it started more or less the minute I turned 30.

But on the other, I felt totally unprepared for anything involving settling down and having a family.

I also felt familial and the pressure from society to settle and have kids.

But when after many years of yielding to this pressure nothing happened, I started to feel there was something wrong with me…

So I started lying about my age.

The daft thing was I only shaved a year off my age—you would have thought that if I was going to the trouble of lying about my age, I would’ve done it in style right?

But I suppose in truth, I didn’t really want to lie about my age. It didn’t feel comfortable, so I only lied to some people…to others I told the truth.

Maybe in the back of my mind I thought taking just a year off my age, wouldn’t feel so much like lying.

Back then I thought people wouldn’t judge me so harshly about not being married or having kids if I was just that little bit younger.

So you can imagine the trauma I felt when I got to 40 and was still desperately single. Aaaarrrggghhh!!!

I remember celebrating the day with a fantastic dinner at the swankiest restaurant on Shanghai’s bund, M on the Bund with a very nice man. But I didn’t tell him or any of my friends in Shanghai that it was actually my 40^th we were celebrating—I just felt too ashamed to admit how old I really was.

In fact the whole question of age became almost a taboo subject for me…I hated it when someone asked my age, or when a conversation centred on age. So I would do all I could to avoid directly answering any age related questions and would steer conversations onto something else when the age thing became too uncomfortable for me.

And by 40, my body clock had become frenetic, ticking itself into a wild frenzy—intensifying the pressure I felt to do something before it was all too late—but what was it I could do?

I couldn’t magically manifest a suitable man and the perfect family out of thin air could I?

It became the on-going struggle I fought with for the next few years until I got to around 43 then things thankfully started to change after two major events.

The first was my dad’s sprit paying me a visit.

In The Death or Transition post, you may remember I stated that my dad died in May 2009, spending a week with me before he transitioned. 

Well, he came to me again a couple of weeks before my 43^rd birthday with the message to celebrate my life by celebrating my birthdays.

Before my dad’s message, I had decided not to do anything for my birthday…after all what did I really have to celebrate? But after his message, I changed my mind and invited a few friends to go to the hip club of the moment in Shanghai to have a little dance and a drink.

That night ended up being so much fun—the most fun I’d had for many years on a birthday!

The second thing that helped change my attitude towards birthdays was I started working on myself back in 2007, so by the time I was 43, I’d been looking within for about two years and had started getting answers.

The more I worked on myself, the more I understood why relationships and settling down had been so hard for me. And the more I understood about myself the less I needed to hide.

Being open and honest with myself over the years has helped me be more open and honest with the outside world. The more honest I’ve been able to be, the more I’ve enjoyed celebrating not just my birthdays but also my life.

 I now see that the pressure I felt to conform to societal norms were totally my own creation.

I pressurised myself to be fit into the mould I called “normal” So in truth, it was my own narrow ideas about what being normal meant, that created my worries.

I limited myself with the notion that by a certain age I should have done this or that, so when by that age I hadn’t achieved those things, my mind told me I was abnormal.

Can you see just how much our minds limit us, causing us so many unnecessary problems?

Today as I celebrate the beginning of my 52^nd year, I’m still unmarried and without children of my own, but that no longer matters because I’m in a loving relationship with marriage very much on the cards. I have two grown up stepchildren and a new little grandchild.

The issues that plagued me in the past have simply become part of the stories of my very colourful life.

Would I change anything?  No! Because changing something would mean losing the immense wisdom and greater happiness that has come with my growing age.

I now see life a simply a series of experiences to be fully lived and experienced. So here’s to my next 52 years of life!