How things have changed

10:48pm Saturday May 25th 2012. In 114 days I will be 25. In 137 days my baby will be 1. In 147 days, my partner and I will share another anniversary. In 190 days my partner will be 26. In 250 days Master Bumblebee will be 7. Numbers. There are so many numbers. So many life memories are marked with numbers.

I have been on this earth for 9,017 days. That equals 216,408 hours. 12,984,480 minutes. For some reason, this doesn't seem very long to me. Yet so much has happened during my short life, so much has changed. I have laughed and I have cried. I have lost a brother, loved family members like they are brothers. Lost friends, found out who is really there. Had my heart broken. Found the love of my life. Had two wonderful (although sometimes annoying) children. Found a job I actually enjoy doing. Created a home for my family to be happy in. Learnt to stand my ground. Chased my dreams. Learn't to let the right people in. Still trying to learn to let the walls fully down, but we will get there one day.

792 days ago I met my wonderful partner. I didn't know it then, but he changed my life forever. I still remember our first conversation, it was him interviewing me for the job I am currently doing. How quickly things have changed. 792 days ago, I was in a relationship (if you could call it that) with a person I didn't want to be with. was living in a place I didn't want to be. I had just left a job I didn't want to leave. Who knew that applying for my current job ( I only did it for something to do) would change my life so much. I met the love of my life. Met some wonderful people that I class as friends. Found some self pride in what I do. This time 792 days ago, I was screaming on the inside, desperately wanting to get out of the nightmare that was my life. Truth in the matter, the only reason I took my job, was to try and get enough money for me and my son to escape it all. Then my knight in shining armor appeared.

I have been through some pretty low times. I have always managed to slowly drag myself out of these, but always had that dark cloud in the back of my mind that I'd end up right back where I started from. 2,306 days ago I became a mum for the first time. I was only a baby myself. I was 6,711 days old. 18 years, 4 months and 14 days. That dark cloud seemed to vanish for a while. Things were finally looking up despite a few speed-humps along the way. But that all changed when Master Bumblebee was about 8 months old, the same age that my bubba is now. I was living in a town hours away from my friends and family, where I didn't know anyone. It started out very slowly, first I would spend hours just staring at the floor, then I would have trouble getting out of bed. It dawned on me one day that I couldn't remember the last time that I smiled or laughed or even felt happy or interested in anything that was going on. Little did I know it, but this was the beginning of post-natal depression. Took me months to even realise that something was wrong.

Those days are long behind me now. I cannot even think of the last time I felt like there was nothing worth smiling about. The only thing that I worry about now is turning a quarter of a century old in 114 days.