I have a complicated relationship with my birthday. Not because I’m getting older, that part is fine with me. My struggle is that I have no idea how to celebrate my own birthday. I’ve NEVER known how to celebrate my birthday. I know how to be grateful I am alive, but birthdays are more than that to me. To me, a birthday is a day for you to celebrate the existence of someone you love. To consider them and take the time to articulate, “I’m glad you are here, the world is better because you are in it.”
My birthday for me feels less like a celebration and more like untangling myself from deep aches of the past. As a child, I remember waking up every year on my birthday and wondering if anyone would remember; they always did, but I always assumed I’d be forgotten and struggled to regulate the internal emotions of intensely hoping that someone would celebrate me paired with the fear that no one would.
As a young adult, I spent a lot of years alone. Because I didn’t know how to make connections to people, I never really had friends. When it was my birthday, I would make my way home because there I knew I would find people who were grateful I was alive. But even “home” became divided with one half counting me as nothing.
And so my birthday feels a lot like standing in front of a room full of people not knowing what to do with my hands. Awkward because I’m suppose to celebrate, but instead I find myself working to be internally convinced that it really is ok that I exist.
So today I am choosing to be grateful for the people who love me and for the 6 beautiful humans that make visible the fact that my life brought something good into the world.
But I’ll still be grateful when it’s over. I’m much more comfortable thanking the Lord for my daily life and leaving the obligation that I celebrate another year of my existence behind for the next 365 days.
My birthday for me feels less like a celebration and more like untangling myself from deep aches of the past. As a child, I remember waking up every year on my birthday and wondering if anyone would remember; they always did, but I always assumed I’d be forgotten and struggled to regulate the internal emotions of intensely hoping that someone would celebrate me paired with the fear that no one would.
As a young adult, I spent a lot of years alone. Because I didn’t know how to make connections to people, I never really had friends. When it was my birthday, I would make my way home because there I knew I would find people who were grateful I was alive. But even “home” became divided with one half counting me as nothing.
And so my birthday feels a lot like standing in front of a room full of people not knowing what to do with my hands. Awkward because I’m suppose to celebrate, but instead I find myself working to be internally convinced that it really is ok that I exist.
So today I am choosing to be grateful for the people who love me and for the 6 beautiful humans that make visible the fact that my life brought something good into the world.
But I’ll still be grateful when it’s over. I’m much more comfortable thanking the Lord for my daily life and leaving the obligation that I celebrate another year of my existence behind for the next 365 days.
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