Birthdays

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but I don’t know if I’ve ever explained… I struggle with my birthday.

Once upon a time birthdays were for drinking and dancing, shoving $20 in your bra and knowing that would be enough to get you home in a cab if it all turned bad. They were for lunches and shopping and big nights out.

Even as a kid they were fun. Presents and sleep overs and getting to choose whatever you wanted for dinner and a vienetta ice cream cake. Those are the things that birthdays were made of.

But then I got older. And while I tried really hard to keep them about fun and dancing and $20 cab rides, inflation and self reflection have had very different plans for me as my birthday numbers got bigger.

After dad died any kind of celebration became hard. And while our birthdays have never really been family affairs it still feels weird sometimes when an occasion arises that you still assume he’s going to walk through the door for or pick up the phone. And with those small realisations that he’s no longer earthside for celebrations, there came a long list of other reflective practices that trigger some very shitty feelings that may or may not have put me in therapy.

I have cried on my birthday for as long as I can remember. Sometimes they’re happy tears. Mostly they’re overwhelmed tears, but in the quiet parts of the day, like this one, there’s a few self pity tears too.

Because what is a birthday but a marker? A sign post that ticks one more notch on the lap counter. And with that very audible internal click, sometimes my brain screams Woohoo! It’s time for a taco and a sangria, but it’s also a signal for my brain to stop and check where I’m at and where I thought I would be.

Mostly the tears are those of gratitude. My friends and family, calling, checking in, reminding me how much they love me – which usually just leaves me so overwhelmed that I cry because I can’t work out how I got so lucky. What could I have possibly done to deserve to have these people in my life who love me and wish happy things for me? So many of them willing and wanting to take the time, spend a moment, share a thought on a day that is mostly significant just to me. Well mum too, she might have had a big day that day.

And it’s here that I trip myself up. That the #fuckedfeelings kick in and boot my arse to the tears of self pity and hurt.

Tiny moments in a birthday where I outright believe that I’m not worth that kind of effort, professing of love and care or attention. And while I know that’s not true, there is zero evidence from the people who love me that they are there by anything but their own choice, the spiral down is hard and fast. Like the shotgun at Amazon’s used to be. A mortifyingly steep descent that leaves you with friction burn on your flaps and in a state of mild shock for the next hour or so.

That spiral moves fast, like lightning, to the have nots. What I don’t have that I thought I would by whatever number this year happens to be, the moments in the past year, or eight, where I was left alone, shattered and no one’s first choice, the feeling where I put myself out there to the Universe to be left floating between earth and the sun with an oxygen tank on half. And it’s so easy in those quiet moments on big days, to stay there. Rubbing the metaphorical red marks on your arse and trying to catch your breath after that guy lunch the universe served you as you passed go and didn’t collect $200, and feel fucking terribly sad about what I’ve lost, what never was, what I’m missing and what never will be.

Some years I stayed there. 39 was rough. I stayed home and cried most of the day with a one year old who didn’t know it was my birthday. 40 was ok. There were tears but thankfully mostly of gratitude and love to my people for showing up to a birthday party I was worried no one would come to, and today there is 41.

There have been tears today, as there always are. Tears after I got off the phone to mum remembering that dad wouldn’t call later, tears of love and well wishes when my best friend got on a plane to see her other favourite human but had stood at my gate in the early morning waiting for me to answer (I didn’t – I was sleeping), tears of love and thankfulness when I read a birthday card at lunch from another best friend who likes to remind me, birthday or not, that she thinks I’m a magnificent human all year round, tears of bittersweet acceptance when another left a singing message on my phone – all of these tears in one day for a thousand different reasons.

I am working very hard to keep the #fuckedfeelings tears to a minimum today. They’re definitely here, but I do not want to give them the space to steal the joy of the good tears that have already come.

I know in my brain and I can see in the behaviour of my friends and family that my fear of not being worth all of this love and attention is bullshit. If I wasn’t worth it, they simply just wouldn’t bother. And they do. Year after year, they do. They know that the after burn comes, and they know that the #fuckedfeelings tears exist and they work so hard to remind me on my birthday that this belief that I am a burden and an obligation are made up feelings by my heart to provide excuses for the people who have hurt me in the early 40 laps I made.

41 laps later and I still look for things that I’ve done to make the people I love leave me or not love me. And my adult brain is trying to teach my very young heart that life, and love, is never quite that simple. That the people we love the most are the ones that hurt us the most. Their absence from our heart, whether that absence be physical or not, is going to hurt and sometimes it’s not anybody’s fault. It just is. And on the day that I celebrate that click from the lap counter, I will feel all of the tears – fucked or not – and my heart will catch up one day soon to the what brain has always known. On my birthday, and everyday before and after, my life is filled with people that choose to be in it for no other reason than they love me just the way I am.

I will forever be grateful that my friends know me well enough to coordinate my birthdays so that the quiet moments are short and that the happy tears out number those that hurt. I am so very loved. And if you notice the tears when I give you a hug on my birthday – be assured they’re probably happy ones.

Now I’m late for a cheeseboard, a taco and a bowl of sangria. But I don’t think $20 is going to get me home.

Happy Birthday everyone. XO