Birthday Blues
Apparently, just in case you’re interested, it is totally normal to be sad on your birthday.
The best birthday still contains one inevitable sorrow: it reminds you of the separation between past and future, the one-way nature of time, that there is no going back to the you of last year.
As someone who is often sad on her birthday, and this year felt very sad on her birthday, I liked hearing that other people thought about how “one day all our birthdays will run out.”
I don’t think it would help to ignore my birthday and celebrate a different day. It’s marking the day in general; realizing I’ll never be able to say I’m 44 again. Milestones remind me that time has passed.
When I started this blog, I was 32 and I thought that was old. 45 felt impossibly far away. And now it’s here.
Come sit with me if you’re also sad around birthdays.
5 comments
*Sits down next to you and leans my head on your shoulder.* I’m with you, girl.
Birthdays never used to make me sad until my dad passed away the year I would turn 30. Then every year was a reminder that he wasn’t here on earth celebrating with me. The first year (my 30th) I didn’t celebrate at all.
And then when we struggled with IF each birthday felt like a ticking clock. I still feel that way now, actually. I mean, what age is too old where I have to finally accept my reproductive years are over? That that chapter is over?
Running out of birthdays doesn’t scare me. Running out of time does.
I have my 40th coming up at the end of the year and don’t really know how to feel about that. Usually I try to focus on the things that are going right in my life and how fortunate I am, which is a lot.
Also Baroness Von Sketch has the most hillarious video about turning 40, and I like to think about it when I might be in danger of taking myself too seriously.
https://youtu.be/QlitWXlTDYY
But in general facing mortality is an existential thing, and I figure it’s best to get in the habit of thinking about it. And I have, even from the time I was very young. The good part is many things about getting older are way less scary so far. There is also the fact I do believe I am a natural crime/curmudgeon. I am coming into my true self. 😂
Ahem. Natural crone not natural crime lol
I am with you on the birthday thing. I started having some struggles with birthdays around age 30 – in a weird coincidence, I was diagnosed with PCOS two days or so before my 30th birthday, so I don’t doubt that there’s something about that fact that plays in. Even prior to the diagnosis, though, 30 seemed…different…somehow than the ones prior. I think some of it is that at this point, I see doors closing as I age on certain possibilities that are simply taken for granted by those in their teens and 20s.
And there’s the mortality thing, which I’m starting to feel more. It’s an acknowledgement that the birthdays won’t be infinite. It also probably does not help that my sibling’s death date comes 2 days before my birthday which makes the whole feeling much sharper.
All this to say, I definitely hear you and feel the sadness.
I’m not sure birthdays make me SAD, but they do sometimes give me pause (“I am HOW OLD now??”). I try not to dwell on it too much, & focus on it as a day when I can make everything all about ME without guilt, lol. 😉 Mostly, I try to remember what my grandmother used to say (& as I think I have said on my blog many times): “It’s better than the alternative…!” (I actually saw a mug with that on it today! — didn’t buy it, but should have, lol.)