We exist 365 days a year. Over, and over, and over again.
We stumble through the beginning, army-crawl through the middle, and teeter through the rest.
Hopefully not all, optimistically most, come and go without a scrape or blunder.
But the days that bruise can feel like years themselves.
Hard or insignificant – they take up a lot of the time.
Or you’re blessed with delusion.
Or you choose to celebrate.
The small achievements, the silly friendaversaries, the day attributed to your existence.
“I’m not a big birthday person.”
“I don’t like to make it a big deal.”
“Who wants the attention?”
“I’m just closer to death.”
The results are in from the poll I didn’t facilitate.
People of a certain age have decided birthdays are juvenile, narcissistic, archaic rituals.
What they don’t realize – they’ve trapped themselves in a box.
A piñata-shaped box full of party hats, bad cake, and the smell of balloons.
Birthdays need to be set free from the chains of a 20-second song sung by a room full of beady eyes staring into your soul.
Birthdays are the holiday of you.
You Day.
You collect the pieces that bring you the most joy, and you clobber them together for 24 hours.
Look ahead or look back.
Reflect or forget.
Explore or hide.
Together or alone.
Unapologetically take one of the 365 days to allow yourself to revel in the fact that you’re here. You just did it all again for another year. And you’re about to do it for another one.
This is the fourth birthday in a row I have chosen to spend the day alone.
Most of them have been filled with a lot of time scream-singing on a long drive, meandering through nature, looking at people’s old stuff, and intermittently tearing up.
I wish I knew why, or if it was a common occurrence, but when I entered my 30s, it was like my body was dipped in a vat of emotions.
I feel a lot, a lot of the time. Mostly my own swarm of insecurities and anxieties, but I also relentlessly sponge up others’.
Your facial expression, your tone, the order in which you placed those words. I consume all of it and assume your feelings. And that assumption grows legs, running away from both of us.
It’s exhausting.
So I take a day, trying only to dissect and regulate my own jumble of adjectives.
Thankful, lightly restless, romantically starved, less-than-usual anxious, platonically fulfilled, hopeful, buzzed.
With only five hours to go, the goal is to abandon the self-inflicted interrogation of intent and growth. 300+ days to analyze myself.
Hours 20-24 shall be for hot tub singing, vampire smut, and dog cuddles.
Happy me day to me.