Why do I have to celebrate my birthday?

“What is it about a birthday that made one has to celebrate?” I started thinking about it as soon as I was back from Kenya, completely exhausted with the week trip. It dawned on me that in less than a week, I have to held my turning-29yo birthday party. My husband couldn’t be there due to work, most of the very few friends I have couldn’t be there. What’s the point? It felt even sadder having a celebration with no one attending it. On the weekend most people can, I couldn’t find anyone to cover my shift.

When I celebrated it, I didn’t celebrate me, the fact I was born or that I am still alive, I think of it as a moment where I can force my friends to come hang out with me to do what I want: karaoke and or playing board games. If I do that now, it’ll just be me singing on SingStar at home alone, like any other days. Despite the existing celebrations, I have always been on the darker side of the birthday cause then I think “Oh, great, closer to death. What have I done so far with my life, eh? Shit.”

I get confused when people congratulate me for my birthday. I said “thank you” but not really understand it, like when my husband said I’m pretty as I wake up in the morning and I say thank you but I don’t feel it’s true due to the morning shitface and dragon breath. It feels like they are saying, “congratulations, you are still alive.” And I thought, “yeah? so do you, mate.” Staying alive is not what I actively do most of the time, so I don’t feel like it is an achievement to be congratulated for. It is just a by-product of wanting to do so much things in live cause if you want to do all these things you gotta be alive. The only time I actively try to stay alive was when I was truly suicidal, then I fought to be alive but that’s not my default mode.

The world seems to think that you need to be treated special when it is your birthday, which I and a lot of people agree. I think it is one opportunity to get good stuffs from people, like how I milk things from my husband cause then it is the only time he will buy me expensive board games or give me breakfast in bed. Well, on the day of my birthday this year, the hospital is giving me a lumbar puncture, which is the opposite of what I do, instead of milking things out of people, now they are milking fluids out of me. Funny, eh.

I asked my online therapist about this. I paid 65USD for this conversation, said someone who doesn’t want to celebrate her birthday. I told her that I have always put a big pin on birthdays, it was really important that my friends come cause then it shows that they care about me. I even used to get upset if my friends didn’t give me a birthday present. Now, I learned that people have different love languages, not everyone saying love with presents.

My therapist, “do you feel loved and cared by your friends in any other days?”

Me, “yes…”

My therapist, “so when they don’t come on your birthday, all the care and love they have given you over the year is gone then?”

Me, “No…I understand logically if they can’t come but I still feel sad. I don’t know why.”

My therapist, “What usually happened on your birthday?”

I realized that raised by non-affectionate parents, to say the least, the only time I feel special was on my birthdays. My parents would put effort into making a birthday event, before 1997 economic crisis, my birthdays were quite big, some years after that is just a nice dinner or a cake. We didn’t have much money, so I really felt special when they spend extra money for my birthday. Over the years, it grew on me that this is the time they show me they love me cause I don’t feel it in any other day. My father was an emotionally and physically abusive person and my mother was emotionally unavailable, understandably so being abused most of her life.

So, my therapist told me to reframe my birthday. She told me to actively tell my amigdala, “these friends are not my parents, they don’t just love me on my birthdays they do on every other day in any other ways.” I know my friends love me. Instead of demanding their love expression on my birthday, I should declare my love for myself. That is what I will do.

I will try to write love letters for me on my birthdays. I have to tell me why I am worth celebrating. I have to tell myself how proud I am for living courageously after all I have been through. We can’t rely on others to love us, right? Happy livingday to me!