It’s almost my birthay. My parents called me to wish me a happy birthday (among other things) because they’re going to be busy on my actual birthday. I don’t care beacuse my birthday means nothing to me, but I’ve gotten over hating it by now. If it makes my parents happy to wish me a happy birthday, well, then so be it.
In the past, I hated it. My birthday, I mean. Not because I was getting older; I don’t care about that. but because I hated being alive and that I’ve not done what I’ve wanted with my life. That’s drastically compressing and simplifying what my deal was, but it’ll do for the purpose of this post. I hated it so much, I refused to tell people when it was. When I first joined Facebook, you had to give them your birthday. I just lied and put a random day in January as my birthday. Then, I would be surprised by dozens of happy birthday wishes on that day. It never failed to amuse me.
My mom used to get upset when I said I didn’t celebrate my birthday. She once cried and told me it was such an important day for her. I mean, I think it’s a more meaningful day for her than me, yes, because she was the one who did the work of giving birth to me. I was did nothing to ease the birthing process, and I was probably a poin (literally) in her ass whilst making that journey. Though, family lore says that it only too k half hour for me to slide out (I was in a hurry).
Look. I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t want to be born. And I didn’t want to be alive for the first fifty years of my life (more or less). It took dying (twice!) to give me an appreciation for life, but now, that appreciation is draining from me. This president….this country…my countrypeople….Yeah, I’m not feeling it at all.
After I died and came back twice, I lost my hostility for my birthday. I had become ‘neutral’ to it in the decade before, but neutral was definitely in quotes. I said I did not mind it, but I still did not want to celebrate it. And I did not really want people mentioning it.
Here’s the thing, though. Once I came back to life and became as close to normal as I was going to get, I adopted the day I died and came back to life as my re-birthday. I realized much later that I should have made it when I could breathe on my own, but whatever. I’m keeping my original re-birthday. That meanss that I’m four-and-a-half. Not really, though. It’s not that kind of birthday.