Mary on her 25th Birthday

Today is my 25th birthday. It is a special birthday for many reasons.
1.)First of all 25 is my favorite number. Random I know.
2.)I am now a quarter of a century old! (And I am almost exactly half my mom's age... she's turning 50 in a couple of weeks... shh!)
3.)I am HEALTHY this year. And by healthy I mean, I'm not puking my guts out for five hours every fifteen minutes. I puked several times for A WEEK last year. Starting on my birthday. My friends were bringing over cake and ice cream and we were going to have a bowling party. I was thanking them for bringing the cake and ice cream and telling them "please leave now so you don't have to see me puke!" I went to a work party earlier in the day and I threw up like five times at work. At least I made it into the trash can. I had to wait til I felt like I could stop puking long enough to have my friend drive me home. I won't even go into the fact that my face was swollen and I was in the most physical pain of my life from my tooth being infected and that I had to have freaking surgery!!!! Okay... so that was last year on my birthday. I'm so glad that this year I am 100% a-okay! And I have a cool scar from that...
4.)Today marks a whole year since I've stopped taking anti-depressants. A whole year where I didn't have to rely on medication because my depression was so bad. A year relatively free from depression. (I've had a couple of days or random week but I attribute those bad days to when I was stressed out in school and to hormones). It is AMAZING!!! I love being "normal" and happy!
5.)I have GROWN SO MUCH! It's so weird. I was reading my journal from my birthday last year and just all my journal entries from last year and last summer and I am so different. I have grown and changed for the better so much in the last year. It's pretty cool to know that I am making progress. Moving away from BYU has been for the best because it has forced me to leave my comfort zone and being away from all of my friends has helped me to turn to the Lord more. And I'm definitely out of the BYU bubble. So that's been a little weird but it's also good for me to get to know different kinds of people and to not judge them for being different.
6.)And lastly, it's special because I'm going to make it special! And because I'm in the cool big city that is Washington D.C. And because I have lovely friends who I'm going to dinner with and breakfast with. And I have so many awesome friends who are encouraging and help me to realize that I am amazing! (Because they tell me I am and after a while you start to believe these rumors :) ).
Yay for birthdays! Yay for progress! Hip Hip Hooray!!!
If I were to have any cupcakes for my birthday I'd choose these beautiful flower ones.

P.S. You can read about my birthday last year. It was the second blog post I ever wrote on here.