Thirty hit me like a bullet in-between the eyes. Friends had turned thirty before me and I had been there with the obligatory bunch of flowers and words of consolation. I’d consumed my own weight in food and booze and endured the inevitable hangover from hell without ever thinking that it would one day be me trying to hold back the tears as I blew out the seemingly innumerable candles on a cake with my name on it.

 

With this bullet embedded firmly in the centre of my brain, everything seemed to become blurred and lacklustre. The Boy made a list of possible solutions, most of which included realigning myself with The Force or finding a Yoda-like guru to guide me through my tumultuous thirties. He has never been able to aim right, especially when it comes to solving what he calls my ‘girl’ issues. After a lot of eye rolling and Googling, I succeeded at proving my point that it wasn't only girls who had anxieties about getting older, it’s just that we are much better at talking about it.

 

Days turned into weeks and lying on the sofa in my PJs with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s became my evening routine. One evening, The Boy started acting funny...well, funnier than usual, and then there was a knock on the door and she walked in: my mother! I know that I'm prone to exaggeration but my mother is an exaggeration of life itself. She is flamboyant and colourful and the one person on this earth who can infuriate me and make me laugh simultaneously. She’s had three husbands and is well on her way to Husband No. 4 at the tender young age of 57. She dragged me to the bathroom and made me get ready to go out.

‘Snap out of it,’ she shouted to me over the loud music in the trendy bar she’d insisted on going to. ‘You have no right to feel sorry for yourself. The starving, the terminally ill, the bereaved, they have the right to be sad, not you.’

 

I knew she was right but I wasn’t about to admit it because I realised that I was beginning to enjoy my misery. It was like I had found something to grab onto and use as an ever-present excuse to indulge that part of me that was prone to mood swings and self-pity. We all have that side of us and the more we feed it, the more it takes over everything until we can’t get up from under it. So I huffed and puffed and tried to sound like I was justified in my semi-depression. And what did darling mother do? She laughed right in my face.

 

‘If you want to be sad about getting older, that’s your prerogative. But I raised you to have sober judgment and to see things as they are, not through rose-tinted glasses. Every day presents something to be miserable about and growing up is mostly learning how to recognise these thieves-of-happiness and giving them the F****** boot!’

 

A young waiter came over and asked if we wanted more drinks. Mother said yes and started flirting with the kid who was probably young enough to be her grandson! She laughed out loud and it was a belly laugh, the laughter of the truly happy. I’d been present for half of her life and I knew that she’d had her share of tragedy but she always chose to come out happier and better on the other side.

I wasn’t sure what had come over me, all I knew was that I didn’t need to understand it to fight it. I’d just lain down and let it walk all over me. I’d forgotten what she’d always said to me, that happiness is a choice.

After cocktail number three we were on the dance floor, shaking our booties and giggling like little girls. It felt like the bullet had been dislodged and all it’d taken was a few potent cocktails, some good tunes and the advice of a good woman who just happened to be my mother. All was right with the world again!