Have you ever had a birthday that seemed to come out of nowhere?
I’m not talking about forgetting how old you are or suddenly noticing another grey hair. I mean the kind of birthday that quietly creeps up on you, taps you on the shoulder and forces you to look at your life in a way you weren’t prepared for. That’s what turning forty-five has done to me. Forty didn’t bother me in the slightest. Forty-five has knocked the wind out of me, and I don’t think it’s really about the number. I think it’s about everything that number has made me look at.
For most of my life, getting older never seemed particularly important. After years of believing I probably wasn’t going to have children, I didn’t spend much time thinking about the future. I wasn’t imagining retirement, grandchildren or growing old surrounded by family. I simply got through each day as it arrived. Some years were spent working, others were spent trapped inside my own house because agoraphobia had reduced my world to almost nothing. Looking after myself always felt like something I could worry about later because, truthfully, there didn’t seem to be much reason to think too far ahead.
Then Ruby came along when I was forty-two and turned my entire world upside down. For the first time, I desperately wanted more birthdays. I wanted to be around for school concerts, terrible teenage attitudes, first jobs and all the ordinary little moments that make up a life. The problem is that wanting a future and being prepared for one are two very different things. Now, at forty-five, I’m trying to undo decades of bad habits, unhealthy thinking and neglect while raising a toddler, managing diabetes, building a business and somehow holding the rest of my life together. Some days it feels less like self-improvement and more like trying to renovate a collapsing house while you’re still living inside it.
“I’ve spent years believing life starts after I become someone else. The hardest part has been realising it’s been happening all along.”
The Finish Line Keeps Moving
I’ve realised lately that I spend an awful lot of my life waiting for the next version of me to arrive. The version who has finally lost the weight. The version whose blood sugar is under control. The version who has figured out how to make a living doing something she loves. The version who has a house that feels warm and welcoming instead of one that constantly reminds her of everything she can’t afford to fix. Apparently she’s the one who gets to enjoy life, while the current version of me just keeps doing the groundwork.
The problem with living like that is the finish line never stays where you left it. Every time I think I’ve identified the thing standing between me and the life I really want, another obstacle quietly appears behind it. Lose the weight, then save more money. Save the money, then fix the house. Fix the house, then grow the business. Grow the business, then become a better parent. There is always another condition attached to finally allowing myself to exhale. I’ve spent so much of my life believing happiness belongs to Future Emma that I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to ask whether she actually exists, or whether I’ve simply been moving the goalposts every time I get close.
What makes me sad is that life hasn’t been sitting patiently in a waiting room while I’ve been planning for it. Ruby isn’t going to stay little until I’ve sorted myself out. She isn’t going to pause her childhood while I become healthier, wealthier, more organised or more confident. Every day she wakes up wanting to play, wanting to learn, wanting me to read another book or blow bubbles in the backyard or sit beside her while she proudly stacks blocks that will inevitably end up scattered across the loungeroom floor. My life isn’t waiting on the other side of a list of achievements. It’s already happening, right here in the middle of the unfinished mess, whether I feel ready for it or not.
The Woman I Thought I’d Be
When I was younger, I don’t think I ever sat down and wrote a list of what my life should look like at forty-five, but somewhere along the way I must have built one anyway. It lives quietly in the back of my mind, only appearing when I catch my reflection in a shop window or struggle to pull on a pair of jeans that used to fit. According to that invisible list, I should be healthier than I am. I should have more money than I do. I should have a career that feels established instead of one that still feels like it’s balancing on a knife edge. I should have a home that doesn’t constantly remind me how much work it needs. Most of all, I should feel like a proper adult who knows what she’s doing instead of someone making it up one day at a time.
Lately I’ve become painfully aware of how much I dislike the person looking back at me in the mirror. I don’t want to be the fat girl anymore. I don’t say that because I think being thin magically solves every problem, and I certainly don’t say it because I believe my worth is tied to a number on a pair of scales. I say it because I feel genuinely disappointed when I look at myself. My face is fuller. My clothes don’t fit the way they used to. My diabetes has turned my health from something I could ignore into something I have to think about every single day, and every time I look at myself I don’t just see the extra weight. I see years of putting myself last, years of believing there would always be time to deal with it later, and years of choices that suddenly feel as though they’ve all caught up with me at once.
“I don’t have my life together. I’m just a forty-five-year-old mum trying to raise a little girl, fix what I can, and hope there’s still enough time to become the woman I want to be”.
Loving Her Doesn’t Mean I Always Like Myself
If there is one part of becoming a mum that I wasn’t prepared for, it’s how quickly every problem becomes a reflection on who I am as a parent. Ruby has a difficult day and I immediately wonder what I did wrong. She struggles to communicate and I question whether I haven’t spent enough time teaching her. I lose my patience after the seventeenth tantrum of the day and instead of thinking, “Today was hard,” my brain decides the more logical conclusion is that I’m simply not a good enough mum. It’s exhausting living inside a head that insists every challenge has to be traced back to some personal failure.
The reality is that toddlers don’t come with instruction manuals, and even if they did, Ruby would probably eat hers. She is a tiny human with enormous feelings, very few words and absolutely no interest in behaving according to whatever plans I made for the day. I know that logically. I know she isn’t trying to make my life difficult. I know she isn’t sitting there plotting ways to push my buttons. Yet when I’m running on very little sleep, trying to keep up with work, appointments, washing, meals and everything else that comes with life, logic has a habit of packing its bags and disappearing. What I’m left with is guilt. Guilt for snapping. Guilt for feeling overwhelmed. Guilt for wondering whether she deserves a better mum than the one she’s got.
That thought breaks my heart more than anything else because there is nothing in this world I love more than that little girl. She is funny, curious, cheeky and full of determination. She has given my life more purpose than I ever thought possible, and somehow that love has become another stick I use to beat myself with. I look at her and instead of simply enjoying who she is, I worry about whether I’m enough for her. Whether becoming a mum at forty-two has somehow disadvantaged her. Whether my health, my mistakes or my shortcomings will become her burden one day. She deserves the world, and every time I feel as though I’m falling short, I don’t just feel like I’ve failed myself. I feel like I’ve failed the person I love most.
Carrying Forty-Five Years Into Tomorrow
One of the hardest things I’ve had to admit to myself is that I didn’t arrive at forty-five like this overnight. I didn’t wake up one morning with diabetes, extra weight, a house that needs more work than we can afford, a business that still feels uncertain and a head full of self-doubt. Every one of those things was built over years, sometimes decades, one decision, one circumstance and one season at a time. That’s not me trying to avoid responsibility. It’s simply the truth. I spent a long time living as though tomorrow would always be there waiting for me, and now tomorrow has finally arrived wearing a name badge that says “forty-five.”
The frustrating part is that I now want to change everything at once. I want to lose the weight, get healthy, grow my business, earn more money, make the house feel like a home, become endlessly patient, be the perfect partner, the perfect mum and somehow still find enough energy left over to be a person. Every morning I wake up carrying a list that would probably take three different people to accomplish, then I feel disappointed when I inevitably don’t get through it all. It’s a ridiculous expectation, but knowing that doesn’t stop me setting it for myself again the following day.
Sometimes I wonder whether that’s why this birthday has hit me so hard. It isn’t because forty-five is old. It isn’t even because fifty suddenly feels close. It’s because I’ve reached an age where the gap between the woman I am and the woman I imagined I’d be feels impossible to ignore. One lives inside my head, organised, healthy, confident and capable. The other is standing in the kitchen trying to remember whether she’s put the washing on, worrying about blood sugar, wondering how she’s going to pay for the next thing that breaks, while a toddler is asking for another snack. The trouble is, only one of those women is real, and she’s the one trying her best to hold everything together.
“The future I’ve been waiting for isn’t waiting for me. It’s growing up, one ordinary day at a time, and calling me Mum.”
There Isn’t Another Option
People often say things like, “Just stay positive,” or, “Everything will work out,” and I honestly don’t know what to do with advice like that anymore. I don’t wake up every morning overflowing with optimism. I don’t look at my life and feel quietly confident that everything is going to fall into place. If I’m being completely honest, I spend a lot of time worrying that I’ve left it too late to undo the damage I’ve done to my health. I worry about money more than I’d like to admit. I worry about Ruby. I worry about whether this business will ever become enough to take the pressure off. There are plenty of days where I can’t see the finish line at all.
People sometimes ask what keeps me going, and I wish I had a profound answer. I wish I could tell you it’s hope, or faith, or some deeply inspiring belief that everything happens for a reason. The truth is much less exciting than that. I keep going because there isn’t another option. Ruby still needs breakfast when I wake up feeling overwhelmed. The washing still needs doing. Bills still arrive. Blog posts still need writing. Dinner still has to appear on the table somehow. Life doesn’t pause while I have an existential crisis, so I get up, make a coffee and start working through whatever today’s version of chaos happens to be.
Maybe that doesn’t sound particularly inspiring, but I suspect it’s far more common than we admit. I think there are a lot of ordinary people quietly carrying far more than anyone around them realises. They’re not changing the world before breakfast or smashing goals before sunrise. They’re simply getting through another day because the people they love are relying on them to do exactly that. It’s not glamorous, and it probably won’t end up printed on an inspirational poster, but there’s an honesty in it that I find strangely comforting. Sometimes surviving the season you’re in is the only achievement you’ve got, and perhaps that’s enough for today.
Maybe This Is What Midlife Really Looks Like
I sometimes wonder whether we’ve been sold a strange idea about midlife. It’s supposed to be the age where you’re settled, confident and finally enjoying the rewards of all the hard work you’ve put in. You’re meant to have a career, a comfortable home, financial security and enough life experience to stop questioning yourself every five minutes. Then I look around at people my age and realise very few of us actually seem to feel that way. Most of us are still trying to work things out. The details might be different, but we’re all carrying something. Age doesn’t magically hand you certainty. Sometimes it simply gives you a longer list of things to worry about.
Perhaps that’s why turning forty-five has rattled me so much. It has forced me to accept that there isn’t going to be a moment where someone taps me on the shoulder and says, “Congratulations. You’ve officially got your life together now.” That day isn’t coming. There won’t be a certificate in the mail declaring me emotionally mature, financially secure and completely comfortable in my own skin. There will only ever be another birthday, another year and another opportunity to decide what I want to do with whatever time I’ve been given. Whether I spend that time wishing I were somebody else is entirely up to me.
I don’t know what my life will look like by the time I turn fifty. Maybe I’ll have lost the weight. Maybe this little business will finally become something that takes the pressure off. Maybe we’ll have a house that feels a little less overwhelming and a bank account that doesn’t keep me awake at night. I hope all of those things happen because they matter to me. But if there’s one lesson I’m trying to learn before another five years disappear, it’s that I don’t want to spend them believing my real life is still waiting somewhere up ahead. I’ve already given enough years to that way of thinking.
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