"Happy" Birthday?

So the other day I was driving back from work when the radio started playing Bryan Adams' "18 Till I Die". Now you should understand that I can totally relate to this song cos I belong to this breed of people who dread birthdays (only mine....I love my friends's birthdays....wat the heck...I like cake!) .....The run up to my birthday usually has me moping around the place whining about how old I am and how I have done nothing with my life. My depression and frustration reaches its high on the actual morning of my birthday when people wish me with their happy faces (which I construe is because they are secretly jubilous bout me becoming one year older!) and it takes all my strength to not punch someone. Now the worst part is when I'm in all my mourning over the loss of my previous year and some moron asks me for a treat. TREAT!!!! U WANNA TREAT!!! I'M ONE STEP CLOSER TO MY GRAVE AND THATS REASON TO CELEBRATE!!! By this time I've decided that I have the patience of a saint to have gone through half the day surrounded by such insensitive jerks and not used violence once. Thankfully I cheer up considerably in the evening cos somehow my friends have managed the suprise party (Yes there is always cake!)....and me having been blinded by sorrow have always been "suprised" although on thinking back the clues were all there. They truly need to get better at organizing suprise parties. So this has been my birthday story every year since I turned 21, up until my last birthday when I turned 25.

Coming back to the present, me in my car, listening to "18 till I die", I started thinking of how my life was when I was 18. I was studying B.Com, which was a nightmare, I had no money. I had no car. I had no idea what I would become, where and If I would do my PG, what sort of a job I would have. I remembered distinctly how worried I was at 18 about my future, how not confident I was. Then I thought about how my life is now. I have money. I have a job. I have people reporting into me at work (Yipee! I actually get to boss people around). I have a car. I have many more friends and have much more fun and I most certainly dont have a curfew. Then it hit me, after all these years of wishing I was 18, that I hated being 18. I love my life now, ok maybe not love (my boss's face just flashed by) but definately like it more now and would not trade it for any other stage in my life. So what if it took me more than 4 years to figure that out. The point is I finally did. So I'm hoping that my 26th birthday will be different, that I wont want to punch anyone and who knows I may actually take the jerks out for lunch.