Why I’m glad to be 28.

For the longest time I wanted to die when I was 27. With just over twenty-four hours to go before I turn 28 I’m glad that’s one particular goal I wasn’t able to achieve. Quite frankly, and please forgive me turning the air blue for a minute, that’s a fucking terrible idea.

Each year my best friend would write the number of years I had left in my birthday card. It was a touchingly morbid joke.

I would spend hours listening to The Doors and wanting to be Jim Morrison.

I would try and work out how it was going to happen.

I was death obsessed. In many ways that actually ended when I experienced death occurring closer to me than ever before. In the space of two years I lost a lot of people who I assumed would be around forever. The loss I felt was enough to turn me off of romanticising death. There’s nothing cool or sexy about it, especially when people are young. Each time I read about death it hurts me, particularly if that person was taken “before their time”. I can’t exclude the possibility there might be a God. Unfortunately it seems the only time you’re ever supposed to find out is when it is too late to report it back to anyone else. I can’t understand what his master plan could be when he decided to take friends away from me. I can’t foresee some kind of incredible explanation for it all. I revert to the proposition which one of the friends I lost tried to ascribe to… “be excellent to each other”. That’s all we can do.

I am now looking forward because there is so much to be done, so much to see and I can’t wait to share it with you.