Unravelling on my birthday: Depressed and navigating dark times.

It’s my birthday today. But after a few incredibly rough weeks, especially with my mental health, celebrating feels different this year. There’s no way to sugarcoat how I’m feeling right now. It’s a mix of heartbreak, emotional scars, and fragility.

This blog is usually a place where I uplift other women by sharing my experiences, recipes, and the highs and lows of motherhood. But occasionally it becomes a space for me to offload, almost like a diary… and that feels liberating. WordPress tells me that hundreds of you silent readers still visit each month, and despite how public this platform is, I find comfort in using it as a safe space for vulnerability. So please bear with me as I offload once again. I hope this doesn’t put off those of you who come here for something different.

These past few weeks have made me question everything about myself and my life. I’ve doubted my values, my sense of self, and what I truly stand for. I’ve questioned if I’m really the hardworking, strong woman, good mother and wife I believed myself to be. I’ve questioned my self-worth, my self-esteem, and whether I can trust again, or if I’m as trustworthy as I thought. It’s been a mostly silent and lonely struggle, except for the moments I felt brave enough to confide in my husband, who is and will always be my absolute rock.

My mental health is at its lowest and right now healing doesn’t seem anywhere in sight. I’m dealing with a difficult situation with one of my children; I’m going through a devastating friendship breakup – the hardest and most painful I’ve ever experienced. It’s left me scarred in ways I will never fully recover from. I’m not where I want to be in life and I’m still battling old traumas, ones I thought I had healed from after two lengthy rounds of therapy.

So here I am. Not in a good place, and these struggles have taken my mind to some very dark corners. It seems to get worse around my birthday every year. The feeling definitely gets heightened around this time of the year. Maybe it’s the realisation that growing older doesn’t erase past issues, you just carry them forward as you go through life.

Birthdays also have a way of reminding me of all the things I haven’t accomplished by this age. I’m not even living in the country I want to be in. You might wonder, “Why don’t you just take the steps toward what you want?” And the answer is: I have. But while some aspects of life – like career moves, are more manageable, others, like moving to another country, are far more complicated.

Then there’s my relationships with people, which feel more layered and difficult to manage right now. I tend to swing between two extremes: either completely isolating myself from friends and family or becoming overly dependent on people I know don’t have the capacity to love me the same way. There’s rarely an in-between and I usually learn the hard way that neither approach is healthy.

There’s nothing worse than realising you meant absolutely nothing to someone you loved and cared for, not even as much as dirt under their feet. Someone you trusted with your vulnerabilities for years; someone who got to know all your messy parts but didn’t judge because they shared similar struggles. Meaning that for a while, you were each other’s confidants. We don’t talk enough about the void they leave when they suddenly choose to walk away. Or how unbearable it feels to go from talking constantly to becoming strangers – or worse, enemies. We don’t talk enough about how it feels to be lied to for years and taken advantage of, through a connection that never really was. And we definitely don’t talk enough about how hard it is to turn the page, especially without closure.

This is where I’m at. It’s painful, but I’ve come to accept my role in it: trusting too easily, allowing myself to be used, becoming too attached, and lacking boundaries. There’s a lesson in this somewhere and I hope I’ll finally learn it.

In closing, I’d say that my life feels like a mess, but probably only through my own eyes. From the outside, anyone would think I’ve got it all together. I still smile, I still laugh, I’m doing well at work, we have a roof over our heads, food on our table, our bills are paid, I have three amazing children, I’m healthy and have a loving marriage. Yes, these are my precious blessings and I don’t take them for granted. But I know what my struggles are, and there’s no point in pretending everything is perfect. I’ll find my way out of this; I just don’t know when or what that will look like. And I hope I’m well enough to survive this and share my victory story.