27

It’s official – I’m now 27. My birthday has been and gone. But what a fabulous day it was (until the end, but I’ll get to that later). It was definitely my best birthday for quite a few years – I saw everyone I wanted to, I had some great presents, and my husband bought me a mermaid cake.

The celebrations started on Friday evening, where I met up with three of my friends and we went out for dinner at the Italian restaurant in town. There were so many laughs, and thanks to my friends continuously badgering the waiters, my dessert arrived with a candle in it and I was given a very large cocktail glass full of limoncello. We also told them it was my 18th birthday…It’s quite depressing I’m now at the age where I’m offended if I’m not asked for ID. Flash back to 5 years ago when I was kicking off in the cinema because I had been ID’d to get into The Inbetweeners 2 – which had a 15 certificate. I was 22 and clutching my car keys…Anyway, I digress. My point is – things have changed.

Needless to say, I woke up on my actual birthday with a bit of a hangover. Thankfully, it didn’t crush my buzz too much. Gifts from my husband included a new charm for my bracelet and tickets to this year’s Funny Bones comedy show in Bristol. I had visits throughout the day from my Mum, my Dad, and my Mother-in-Law, and some fabulous presents from them. There seemed to be a theme in the form of gin. I had 2 gin gift sets and a large bottle of lemon drizzle flavoured Sipsmith. Hell yeah. I was also incredibly spoilt by my friends too – my two best ones just get me. I was given gin, sweets, sweary pens, Disney pants, a sheep scarf, a sheep notebook, and unicorn bath bombs to name a few. I bloody love my friends.

Anyway, the plan was to invite some of our friends over in the evening for a few games and some drinks. I was looking forward to it because this particular bunch of friends we haven’t seen for months. My husband bought nibbles and he even returned home from his trip to the shop with my mermaid cake. Unfortunately, 15 minutes before my friends were due to arrive, my stomach and brain decided that I’d had a good 24 hours of enjoying my life, and that was quite enough. This was when I had the most horrendous panic attack I’ve had in months. I felt sick, I broke out into a cold sweat and my heart felt as though it was going to pound out of my chest. I tried my hardest to fight it but unfortunately I turned out to be fighting a losing battle, and I’m ashamed to say that at the last minute we had to cancel our plans.

I was absolutely gutted. To be honest, I was more angry than anything. The one day I should be allowed to be free of any anxiety and it hit me with a vengeance. How was that fair? Anxiety well and truly was the bully that insisted on ruining my day. Anyway, give or take a couple of hours and a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Brooklyn 99, obviously, I was fine. Aside from a very badly battered ego. Happy birthday to me.

After an epic 10 hour sleep, I was feeling a little better, but it wasn’t until this morning I actually left the house. Had to go to Morrisons. All in all, I hadn’t left my house since Friday. I still don’t feel 100% but I’m blaming that on the epic bitch of a panic attack that shat on what could have been a fantastic evening with my friends. If we’re being truthful, I feel a little better now, but that’s probably due to the large gin and tonic I’m drinking.

So all in all, 90% of my birthday was fabulous. We’ll currently ignore that 10% that was ruined by that little shit known as anxiety, because it got what it wanted through me cancelling my plans on Saturday night. I feel as though I’ve majorly slipped, but I’m now thinking that maybe I need to start doing a little more work to fight it again. Hopefully, this time next year, I’ll be writing a post about how I had the most awesome, anxiety free 28th birthday, but we’ll see.