2:22AM

At 2:22 in the morning, 27 years ago I came to say hello to the world and I kicked and screamed my way through this complicated thing called life ever since.

I’ve spent the last two weeks hyping myself up for my birthday so that I am not the weirdo that hates her own birthday. This day has been causing nothing but anxiety for me for the past few years because it is a constant reminder that time is passing by while I am still in the same place trying to figure out what the hell I want or should do. It’s a reminder that there is a void in my life that I cannot define and don’t know how to fill.

In the last two weeks leading up to my birthday I have considered going back to university, moving out of the country, getting back to studying for my Project Management certificate, buying an apartment, switching careers or simply giving up on everything and going with the flow. None of the options seemed appealing to me.

When I step back and look at the big picture, I know objectively why 2:22 AM on 16th of July gets to me so much. I’ve been around for 27 years now and I could count the number of years I lived and remembered with one hand. I lost my childhood and teenage years to domestic abuse, courts and police, poverty, struggle and fear. I was never a kid or a teenager. From the second I was capable of understanding the world around me I had to be an adult. I had to be responsible and hyper-aware of everything around me and I had to know how to think 15 steps ahead and plan for every single outcome for situations from going to school to simply walking through my house. It wasn’t something I picked for myself, it’s a skill I had to master as a child in order to stay alive and now my brain is still the same but I no longer live in a situation where my life is under constant threat. How do I explain that my brain is in a constant state of fight-or-flight, even when I am peacefully sitting on the couch and reading a book? How does one live like that?

What torments me more is the concept that great suffering has to have a greater purpose. I survived domestic abuse, violence, an attempt against my life, I once crawled out of my own house through a window to escape my father, I know what it’s like to sit in a cold house during winter and having an empty kitchen, I saw my mother beaten and bleeding and now that chapter is closed and the question is what is life after it? Yes, there is peace and love and happiness within reach, there is finally silence but I have no experience living in it. Whenever things get really good, I will find or manufacture a problem just because I need chaos to drive me forwards. In a masochistic way, I don’t want the pain to end because it was the only fuel I ever had.

It creates another burden which is the feeling of ungratefulness. I should be thankful and happy and calm and overwhelmed with how great my life is now but I can’t. And it’s crippling to admit that. It’s defeating to admit to yourself that you don’t know how to be happy and enjoy life.

There is a part of a song from my favorite singer Dino Merlin, which translated goes something like this:
At this age, every new one comes as an insult
At this age, even love isn’t a victory anymore.

I am too young to understand what he is singing about, but I still do.

The easiest thing to do is to say that I shouldn’t live in the past. And I don’t but that does not stop the past from living in me.

I guess that the hardest part is admitting that no amount of education, success, money, good career choices and recognition will change anything for me unless I learn how to accept happiness, live in it and believe I deserve it.

So here I start another journey around the sun hoping that next year 2:22AM on the 16th of July will be a better one and that I will not give up on myself anymore.

Love,
Luna

You can buy my book on Amazon by clicking: Rehab

---