birthday
Today is my birthday!
I don't really have anything to say, and I don't have time to write any of the posts I wanna write (oh, Johnny Weir), but.
There was chocolate cake at work, and presents and a faily coworker who was handled pretty well by my other coworkers, which was nice, and texts and tweets and emails, even DW PMs, and probably Facebook messages though I haven't checked FB yet (the fact that I'm rarely on FB is why I suspect I got so many messages of other kinds lol).
I'm always a little anxious on my birthday, and sort of not having panic attacks around this time has been a labor of over a decade, and every year I consciously try to do better and every year it gets a little easier, I think. But. I've accepted that I'll probably always have this little well of anxiety around this time.
For various reasons, around my birthday is when every anxiety I've ever had about not being social enough or not having enough friends or whatever comes around and becomes multiplied by a billion. Thoughts I haven't had in, again, like a decade, persist around this particular day.
I know other people have anxieties around their birthdays, so on this occasion let me share one particular moment that was, I think, instrumental and the first brick in a long road to reclaiming this day, for me.
One of my half-sisters is an extrovert and a general ball of sunshine and is amazingly, beautifully the opposite of everything I am. (My other half-sister, on the other hand, is a carbon copy of me, which is incredibly disturbing.)
She taught me so much the first time I met her. She was just a kid, and I was trying to teach her something every day, but at the same time having a sister who was so profoundly different, with who I got to spend so much time, was transformative.
The day she turned 13 I watched her go about her life - go to school, spend time with her family, go to activities. Where I was used to being awkward on my birthday, never sure how to behave, my sister just started every conversation she had that day with a new person by smiling and saying "it's my birthday!" and clapping her hands.
And the thing is, every time she did that, regardless of who the person was, they smiled back and said "yay, happy birthday!" and clapped along with her. And that was it. They had that brief moment of celebration, and then the conversation moved on, and watching that was life-altering for me. I don't know why, I could give a billion reasons, but something about it was just... such a simple social script, that accomplished everything she wanted to accomplish and was not heavy or cumbersome.
So, ever since then I have a habit of just... telling people it's my birthday. Not wait for them to ask or notice, or wait for it to come up in conversation, or stress about their reactions. Just... say the words. At first it used to be like ripping off a bandaid, but very quickly it became what it was for my half-sister: just a way to share joy.
So, it's my birthday :) It's been a nice trip around the sun, and I hope to complete many more of them.
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I don't really have anything to say, and I don't have time to write any of the posts I wanna write (oh, Johnny Weir), but.
There was chocolate cake at work, and presents and a faily coworker who was handled pretty well by my other coworkers, which was nice, and texts and tweets and emails, even DW PMs, and probably Facebook messages though I haven't checked FB yet (the fact that I'm rarely on FB is why I suspect I got so many messages of other kinds lol).
I'm always a little anxious on my birthday, and sort of not having panic attacks around this time has been a labor of over a decade, and every year I consciously try to do better and every year it gets a little easier, I think. But. I've accepted that I'll probably always have this little well of anxiety around this time.
For various reasons, around my birthday is when every anxiety I've ever had about not being social enough or not having enough friends or whatever comes around and becomes multiplied by a billion. Thoughts I haven't had in, again, like a decade, persist around this particular day.
I know other people have anxieties around their birthdays, so on this occasion let me share one particular moment that was, I think, instrumental and the first brick in a long road to reclaiming this day, for me.
One of my half-sisters is an extrovert and a general ball of sunshine and is amazingly, beautifully the opposite of everything I am. (My other half-sister, on the other hand, is a carbon copy of me, which is incredibly disturbing.)
She taught me so much the first time I met her. She was just a kid, and I was trying to teach her something every day, but at the same time having a sister who was so profoundly different, with who I got to spend so much time, was transformative.
The day she turned 13 I watched her go about her life - go to school, spend time with her family, go to activities. Where I was used to being awkward on my birthday, never sure how to behave, my sister just started every conversation she had that day with a new person by smiling and saying "it's my birthday!" and clapping her hands.
And the thing is, every time she did that, regardless of who the person was, they smiled back and said "yay, happy birthday!" and clapped along with her. And that was it. They had that brief moment of celebration, and then the conversation moved on, and watching that was life-altering for me. I don't know why, I could give a billion reasons, but something about it was just... such a simple social script, that accomplished everything she wanted to accomplish and was not heavy or cumbersome.
So, ever since then I have a habit of just... telling people it's my birthday. Not wait for them to ask or notice, or wait for it to come up in conversation, or stress about their reactions. Just... say the words. At first it used to be like ripping off a bandaid, but very quickly it became what it was for my half-sister: just a way to share joy.
So, it's my birthday :) It's been a nice trip around the sun, and I hope to complete many more of them.
comments on Dreamwidth