Today is my birthday and I’m actually a little bit excited about it. For a long time I was sad and depressed on this day, there are a lot of feelings that come with my birthday and I avoided facing them and still do.
Since I have been in therapy I’ve been able to safely work through the trauma I’ve experienced in my life and I’m not sure if that is what has changed this year or not but this is the first year in a long time I wanted to do something for my birthday.
We aren’t doing anything big, we’ve never been able to due to it being on one of the most celebrated days in America and 95% of the people we would invite are already celebrating the holiday.
I’m not sure if I started writing this to release the trauma around my birthday or to just get my feelings out because this day has not been fun since my brother passed away. I’ve tried to celebrate my special day but it hasn’t always been special and I usually ended up crying because I’m so easily overlooked on this day.
It’s been a day where all the hype of the holiday has been on the frontline followed by “oh yeah, it’s your birthday too” which always makes me feel awful. My therapist has helped me go deeper into my hurt to find out where it originated so I can help it pass through my body and help me heal and my birthday itself is a great big hurt.
Having a birthday on a major holiday isn’t as exciting as most would think, at least it wasn’t exciting to me, until this year and I’ve still had pings of doubt surrounding it. It was fun as a kid for sure, I was innocent and it was one of the only days I “belonged” to the family. It was also the day my mother used to get as much attention as she could by retelling the story of my birth to anyone who would listen.
My birthday parties will never be big and extravagant with a room full of people celebrating me unless I choose a different day to honor myself. I don’t know why I’d do that when all I’ve ever wanted was to be honored on the day I was actually born.
This year’s birthday anxiety started out big, then it turned to anger then all of a sudden I decided I wanted to have a party even though I knew it would be an extremely small party. I invited literally a handful of people and one of them is coming which warms my heart. I didn’t expect anyone to make it with a short notice and such a huge celebration happening every where in the United States. After all the US is celebrating 250 years while I’m only celebrating 52, I’m grateful to anyone who chooses to celebrate me instead of our country.
I’m not sure why this day bothers me so much now, it is a reminder of how little I matter to the people in my life. As an adult I watched friends, coworkers, and family all get treated differently on their birthdays. Others would go out of their way to make them feel special, the day is always about them, they were thrown surprise parties and they would be celebrated because they are special to the ones throwing the celebration. I have never had that, and if I did it would probably feel really awkward for me. I’ve had people try to make my birthday special and as hyper vigilant as I am I could always tell they were only doing it to try to help me feel better, not because they actually wanted to. It’s a tough deal to try to explain to others so I bottle it up inside and let everyone celebrate the holiday and I hide in the shadow of it because that’s familiar.
I am truly grateful for the people in my life who treat this day as my birthday and not the holiday it is. Those who make a point to tell me how much I mean to them, to those who understand how much hurt surrounds me today and to those who celebrate me.
This year I’m trying to do a little bit more of being myself and celebrating myself. My brother has been here a lot, I think my dad has been as well. Today is one of my brother’s favorite days of the year, it was the day his Sissy was born and he’d be tired of me being depressed about it and he’s been reminding me of who I am and this year I’ve been embracing the things that used to make me feel bad.
It’s time for all the shame I feel to move along. I wasn’t born with it, I was given it every time I tried to do something for myself. I wasn’t born shamed, every time I tried to grow, do something different, or be authentic to myself I was handed a big bowl of it and reminded not to embarrass the family. My dad was an embarrassment to my mother’s family because he was a truck driver who hauled cattle, and was looked down upon from her family and I can absolutely relate to that with my current choice of employment.
It’s really hard to break away from all the chains that have held me down but they are breaking and it’s starting to feel good instead of feeling bad. It helps hearing my brother’s voice in my reminding me who I am.
Enjoy your day today and be safe out there.
My Life, My Story 
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