birthdays
my birthday is next month.
birthdays have always been.. weird for me.
when i was 7, my friends from church and i liked to have these sleepover birthday parties.
we'd play games all day and then sleep side by side in one room.
when my birthday rolled around that year, i was really excited to host my own.
one of my favorite games at the time was hide and seek, so i suggested we play that first.
i hid in my closet, making sure to cover myself with things so that i couldn't be seen.
i heard footsteps here and there but after a while things got really quiet.
as a child i didn't really know how much time had passed but when i started to feel suffocated i decided to step out and see if i won.
unfortunately that was not the case; my friends had stopped playing and decided to boot up my computer, play with my things, etc.
my own parents didn't even wonder where i was while they wandered around my house doing as they pleased.
over 20 years have passed now and it doesn't affect me the way it did back then, but it led to a long-lasting near-hatred of birthdays.
i stopped having birthday parties and told my parents to stop buying me cake on my birthday, even though i love cake.
in middle school and high school i had good friends who remembered my birthday and gave me cards and gifts (and i of course reciprocated as well), but i still never made a fuss about it being my birthday or wanted others to know that it was my birthday.
nowadays, most of my friends host their own birthday parties.
i still enjoy celebrating other people's birthdays, and always contribute to gifts (someone like a significant other will usually take charge and ask for donations for a large gift).
but the thought of celebrating my own birthday is almost.. nauseating.
maybe i don't think i deserve it, maybe i don't want all that attention.
after all, it is quite awkward when everyone is singing happy birthday to you, like, what are you really supposed to do?
so, i usually don't tell anyone that it's my birthday and it's usually just my boyfriend and i getting dinner together or something.
sometimes i feel like maybe i'm ready to celebrate my own birthday this year, but once it gets closer i end up chickening out.
strangely enough though, it still doesn't feel great when my closest friends don't remember my birthday.
i try to say it's my own fault, that we as a group usually just leave it to one's significant other to help remind us and plan for their birthdays so we don't always remember each other's exact birth dates, that i'm the one who wanted to act like i don't have a birthday so it only makes sense for them not to know.
but it still makes me feel some type of way when we talk about upcoming birthdays and my birthday is completely skipped, or when none of them remember to say happy birthday to me, even when last year, my high school bestie posted a story of us on my birthday and i reposted it to my story, and i saw that my current friends saw it.
i think it makes me feel even more "i don't deserve to celebrate my birthday, no one really cares."
i know that's not totally true, but it makes it easy to think that way, you know?
i don't think i'm ready to celebrate myself this year either.
and imagining people putting me at the center of attention gives me a lot of anxiety.
i don't even know what i want, but i hope that some day i'll learn to love myself enough to not just know, but feel deserving of celebration.