Optimism - I Got It!

Today, I'm looking forward to... my birthday.

Now, I generally HATE birthdays. I really do. But I will be 29 at the end of October and my son really wants to do something huge. So he, my girlfriend and my sister have been making plans for a few days now and have simply just told me to be free on a set date.

I'm looking forward to a birthday for the first time since I was 21. That's a pretty big deal, for me.

We're probably going to go away somewhere it seems. Me, my sister, her guy (who will be back in the UK soon), my girlfriendm my son and my nephew - possibly even my best friend and his girlfriend too.

It will be a child friendly weekend, whatever the final plans are and I love it. I've no desire to hit a club like I might have done previous years - to drink myself silly on a bingey Saturday night and spend all day Sunday recovering. Nope. Don't want that.

I want the people I care most about in one place at one time with a good old dose of happy. And that's what I am going to get.

Of course, we have a hurdle first at the beginning of October. It will be a year since my boy's Mother died and he's got it marked on his calendar. It seems he's picked up one of my bad habits - days/dates/anniversaries of bad things. But he wants to mark it in some way and that's what we will do.

As he wishes, nobody else, just me and him.

He can let people in most of the time quite happily. He loves my girlfriend and simply adores my sister. But there are certain things that are just for he and I. And this is one of them. Fortunately, I have the most understanding family in the world and they are absolutely fine with my boy and I becoming somewhat insular on occasions like that.

But we have the balance. We have this great family setup and a lot of people close to us at all the right times. He's genuinely finding his happy spark again and every day we get one step closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Optimism. For the first time in a long time, I've got it - by the bucketload!