birthdays / hurting, feeling forgotten and unloved
Birthdays are really, really important to me. I feel like they're the day when people say "Your birth and how it led to you in my life is a cause for celebration!" I write down people's birthdays on my calendar and get reminders sent to me with birthdayalarm, and even if I don't say anything, I always think of the person on their birthday and feel grateful for them. I used to make posts specifically about birthdays but I stopped doing it because every now and then I would miss someone's birthday and then worry that they felt they were unimportant to me. But I do want to try harder to actually SAY something instead of just thinking it because I get really hurt when people don't say anything to me or treat my birthday as special.
Yesterday was the worst one I can remember. At least on my 18th when my grandfather died, we'd celebrated first. This one was just... shit from the time I woke up. I was at my mom's (I took zir to the clinic for surgery on the 5th because zir wound hadn't healed properly from the plastic surgery ze had (ugh, ugh, ugh)) and zir drainage pump wasn't working so I took zir BACK to the clinic (such an awful, awful place -- I could feel the self-loathing and pain like sewage dripping from the ceiling) and waited around for them to fix it, then drove zir back home and waited for my partner to pick me up. Ze got lost (!!!) on the way over so I had to wait longer, while starving, and then we went to my favorite restaurant in an attempt to salvage the evening and had to wait an HOUR before getting a table (we were both low-energy from hunger so the wait was pure drudgery, no conversation). Dinner was good... but I didn't get any energy back, so we went home where I checked my email one last time and decided to go to bed early.
I think I was subconsciously hoping for some little message from certain people, and when I didn't get it I felt forgotten and unimportant... Usually I can just remind myself that I get told I am loved and important far more than most people, which makes me really lucky and I know that I am, and I'll be comforted, but I think this time I was completely worn down from being with Pat for almost two days AND spending time at that awful clinic, so it hit me really hard. And I was hurt that Pat didn't say anything besides an offhand "Happy Birthday" as ze was walking into another room... which is a little out of character because ze's a gift-giving sort of person, but barely acknowledged it. Even though I did have lovely messages from a few people and the most amazing, meaningful gift from Jenny (which I will write about in a non-depressing post), I still feel sad. Even though logically I KNOW that people care about me, I can't feel it right now.
I feel embarrassed writing about this, but I'm STILL hurting over it (been crying while writing this) so I think I need to write about it in order to let it go. This is not an attempt to gather pity or to make anyone feel bad. It's just... true and I don't want to self-censor about it. It's not something I can easily brush off. And I can't even go out to cheer myself up because my car's not working :-(
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