As 2020 goes, my birthday plans are pretty small fry.

The pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of weddings and holidays, mass unemployment, and countless business closures. Most tragic, though, is the fact that Covid-19 has resulted in the deaths of well over 45,000 people in the UK alone.

So, in one of the worst years my generation has ever seen, cancelling a weekend away for my birthday really isn’t the most important thing going on in the world. At all. And yet, somehow, this small disappointment feels like a deafening blow.

We’ve all been isolated from friends, family and colleagues over the last eight months. For me, this has been difficult because my office has been closed for most of the year and I live outside the city so I have been stuck at home alone all day and too far away to meet friends after work.

As someone who hasn’t previously struggled with their mental health, I’ve found myself dealing with long periods of low mood which has been destabilising at times.

“My birthday plans have been cancelled overnight, and now I really am done with 2020”