You'll notice that this is the first post in 2016 following my resolutions. Part of me is sorry about that, because I don't like leaving this blog for too long, but there are plenty of good reasons for it - mostly involving Figaro, about which I'll write more tomorrow.
Another part of me feels it's rather apt that I've held off (albeit unintentionally) from updating until now - as today brings yet another anniversary (the twenty-fourth one, in fact!) of when I should've been born. It's an odd thing, because I've written before about how the gap between my 'actual' birthday and this one strikes me every single year, but I'm never quite sure what to make of it. It feels significant, but I don't know if it should - after all, I'm not the Queen, so why would I want/need/deserve two birthdays?
We've never celebrated it, per se - aside from the very first, when my parents bought a circle of doughnuts to mark what they called my 'zero birthday', which I obviously don't remember - and I've never really thought it appropriate to do so, anyway, because I've had too many mixed and disparate emotions about the day. Eleven (nearly twelve) weeks is a long time between expected and actual arrival of a baby; long enough to have had a crucial and lasting impact on the rest of my life. I guess I've always been a tad uncertain (or, perhaps, ambivalent) about that impact and how I feel about it or respond to it. When I was twenty-one, and documenting my journey to walk to collect my degree, I wrote that I thought I'd found a way to feel good about my body through all the training I was doing, and the joy of it being possible for me to take steps across the Butterworth Hall stage.
Whilst that was definitely true, and I was buoyed up by the excitement of managing to walk for graduation, I realise now that that was actually just the beginning. Both RADA and Balliol have also had huge effects on my sense of self, body, and mind. Mostly extremely positive, but sometimes rather the opposite, which made it hard to keep up my pledge of feeling good - even on this day, which is a reminder of how lucky I am to be alive. At least, it was hard in 2014 and 2015. This year, at last, seems different somehow. Whether that's because of more general things (like being older and therefore more abstractly at peace with myself) or specifics such as finally feeling settled and independent in my flat, passionate about a PhD I wouldn't even have contemplated without the life experience my Cerebral Palsy has given me, and delighted by the things being back at Warwick has reminded me it's possible to do, I can't really tell.
What I do know, though, is that (somewhere in the time between turning twenty-four in November and thinking about being that age today), I've discovered that I'm actually pretty okay, even proud, about having been premature. Of course, it's caused hassles, but it's also made me who I am - and, in my efforts to keep my resolutions, I've been learning to like 'me'. That process, however slow, seems something worth celebrating. So, if you'll excuse me until tomorrow, I'm going to sign off now...and eat a doughnut! (Probably not the best idea before going out for a curry with the OpWa lot for a rather more important birthday, Mike Lyle's, but hey. Doughnut calls.)
