I spent my 25th birthday sober.

Yes. Sober. If the first sentence sounded inexplicably morose in your head, (not dissimilar to a doctor giving a patient bad news), we could be related. If the words that followed were steeped in melancholy, well! Pull up a chair and sit by me. We'll drown our sorrows in a couple of G + T's. Hold the G. When it comes to words, there is nothing as cruel as the word lisp, or more sobering as the word sober. Except for me.

Sufficiently depressed? This should just about bring you into my headspace the night before my 25th. It was the first point in my HSM where I felt sorry for myself. It's not that I had a bad day. Quite the opposite. The night before, there was an amazing dinner and even more amazing cake (see below). I had a good friend by my side and a boyfriend that flew down from Brisbane. There was a view of Melbourne from the inside of a beautiful bar and inside that bar? One girl and her birthday, one bottle of untouched 'free-but-otherwise-very-expensive' French champagne, a small shit-storm and a huge pity party.

[caption id="attachment_4031" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Rainbow laser eye beams = Win."][/caption] I could literally see myself sitting on the bar stool at one point. Arms crossed, legs crossed, my face channeling the spirits of Oscar the Grouch and the Grinch who stole Christmas, brain working overtime on conjuring huge mental tantrum. I admit I thought about it, that night. Having a sneaky half-glass of wine, which, according to my calculations, isn't even one standard drink, and is therefore exactly the same to drinking nothing at all. I had to remind myself of a few things: 1) I signed up for HSM for a few reasons listed here and I was going through with it sans the imaginary half-drink and the accompanying excuses. 2) I deliberately ensured my HSM would run over the course of my birthday. Obviously you can pick your own start date, but I wanted to ensure there was a recognisable hurdle, some mother of a social occasion, where I would mourn alcohol's absence. If grieving is an important part of accepting and overcoming loss, then between 11.30-11.50, I grieved. By midnight, I was 25, over the loss, and starting a new year and chapter in my life. As we strolled out at 1am to head home, I felt quietly proud 25 was starting with some kind of accomplishment, and in awe at how one seemingly small decision was having a larger impact on my life. The wheels keep on turning. The day of my birth there was breakfast, and Tim Burton, an afternoon strolling around Fitzroy, fake wine at dinner and a revisit to s2 of True blood, and then? It was all over. No crazy stories, no surprise bumps and grazes, no make up to wash off in the morning, and surprisingly, not a care in the world.