Happy Birthday To Me (tomorrow)
So my birthday’s coming up. Anyone who’s known me very long knows that I’m not really a big fan of my birthday. Why? Meh, it’s hard to explain.
It isn’t really the “getting older” part of it at all. Actually, I quite appreciate that. To me, being young has been all about learning lessons and making stupid mistakes. Really I guess that’s life on the whole. If we don’t keep making mistakes we are probably not leaving the house or waking up in the morning, and if we aren’t learning lessons then we’re not growing at all. Sometimes though, and this is probably just because I live in my own head, those stupid mistakes seem to be a bit too astronomical and those lessons feel pretty damned rough.
As I get older, though a lot of those stupid mistakes and lessons have really started to blossom into something beautiful. I have a great appreciation for this as a gift that only time could have given me. I like getting older. I’m rather proud of being almost thirty. It means I’ve managed to keep a decent enough grip on the crazy spinning top to keep from flying off of it into oblivion. I’m down with that.
What I don’t dig about my birthday is the yearly reminder of crappy past birthdays that it tends to be to me. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of GREAT birthdays that I have to look back on, but during my emotionally formative years, they kinda sucked. Random stupid little things seemed to pile up right around that time and pick that particular day to slap me across the face and sternly shout “Happy fucking birthday, loser”. It’s pathetic, I know. It’s a lot of self-pity, I am aware. And yet somehow, with all of that knowing and awareness, it still haunts me, every year, on December 4th.
I write this not as a request for someone to try to “make my birthday better”. On the contrary, please don’t. It seems like the more people try to do so the more my birthday is even MORE frustrating. You don’t have to do anything. It will be a good day or a bad day and that will happen no matter how hard you try to make it one or the other.
In the end, I think it’s me. Think about it, what’s the common denominator? It’s, number one, Crys, and number two, that Crys, deep down under everything, expects it to be a shitty day. There’s no button she can push to make herself NOT expect that. There’s no magic potion she can take to keep her from being hyper-sensitive about whether or not people “care” (knowing that they absolutely DO, but sometimes having trouble internalizing it) about the fact that she exists on the planet and that that started on December 4th, thirty years ago, which makes today an awesome day. There’s no good reason she should keep speaking in the third person, so she’s going to stop doing that now.
I think that beneath it all the reason that the birthday is difficult for me is because it is a reminder of my insignificance in the Universe. The whole world doesn’t recognize my birthday. A few things in my immediate world recognize it, and there’s a big gaping maw of a hole where not enough immediate things have recognized it in the past, that makes it difficult to appreciate those things now. All in all, it piles together to make a big mound of lameness.
So my birthday’s tomorrow. If you wish me a happy birthday, I will try to be appreciative. I will say thank you. If you give me a present, I will be surprised and honored. If you don’t give me a present (or give no more present than your presence itself), I will still be honored. And perhaps, this birthday, what I need to do is give myself a gift. And perhaps the gift I give myself this year is the appreciation of all of the wonderful things and people that I have in my life at this moment.
Perhaps my present should be this:
Dear Crystal Wolf, Happy Birthday! You are thirty years old! Congratulations! You are a kick ass musician and I’m proud of you for continuing to pursue it. You have two awesome cats and a ton of beautiful wonderful friends and a great apartment. I would like to give you some movies, take you out to see your big sister for a few hours, and, most of all, give you permission to be a mess today. It’s okay for you not to appreciate these things as much as they perhaps deserve on this day, but I hope that you appreciate them somewhat. We’re poor, we’re sometimes lonely, and we have some baggage, and despite this, we are aware of all the cool things in our life. Bravo to you.
Happy birthday. My present to you, is 30. Keep being awesome.
Love,
Me
Originally posted at Crystal's World Feel free to comment here or there.