It’s my birthday today (yesterday by the time this is posted). Normally, I’d shrug and move on because whatever. I’ve hated my birthday most of my life and actively pretended it didn’t exist for decades. I refused to say when it was, and I went as far as to put a fake date online whenever I had to provide a birth date. In fact, back in the early days of Facebook when you had to provide one and they published it without permission, I would have people wishing me a happy birthday in January because I picked a date at random. I would go to FB and see a dozen happy birthday wishes and think, “What the fuck? It’s not my birthday. Why are–oh, right.” I’m glad they’ve allowed the user to decide whether or not she wants to publish her birth date. I don’t care any longer, but I certainly did care for many years.
Then, about five or six years ago, I slowly went from loathing my birthday to being aggressively neutral about it to not caring about it. Was it taiji? Yeah, probably. At any rate, it was strange. What’s even stranger is that a year ago, I hated my birthday again. Not because of getting older. I don’t care about that in general*, but because of what normally haunts me on my birthday–the fact that I’ve wasted my life. For whatever reason, it hit me hard last year. Probably because I’m creeping up on fifty, which seemed unimaginable thirty years ago.
When I was a kid and a teenager, I would be dumbfounded when someone asked me about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Not only did I not know; I didn’t see myself as an adult. I couldn’t picture it because I couldn’t fathom being alive. I didn’t want to be alive, and I couldn’t envision it. Me, someone who can imagine anything came up with a blank when trying to see into my own future. I didn’t think I’d make it past childhood, and it continues to surprise me that I’m alive. When I was in my twenties, I got it in my head that I would die when I reached the age my mother was–55. For a year, I was convinced this was true. Even then, I still couldn’t see anything about my future. I knew what I didn’t want–kids, specifically–but what did I want? I had no idea.
I didn’t feel as if I was really living my life or that I was a real person. It’s hard to explain because I know logically that I exist and that I’m moving through the world. But I don’t feel like an actual human being. It doesn’t help that I am invisible in this world. Asian, bisexual, woman, not married, no children, agnostic, fat, and a whole bunch of other qualifiers that render me worthless. The only way I matter now is that apparently it’s Asian women who are bearing the brunt of the anti-Asian sentiment. It’s not a problem, however, as I’m not going anywhere right now.
Anyway, my mom called last night at 11 p.m. I thought it was because I had sent her an email about some insurance thing, but no, it was because she was in a panic about not being able to call me today for my birthday.
Can you see why this is fucked up? We’ve had clashes in the past about my birthday because she wants to reminisce about my birth and get all maudlin, and I don’t give a shit. I still don’t. She once cried because I was impatient with the story and it was ‘so important’ to her. Fine. It’s important to you. Go talk about it with your friends. I’m the person actually involved in the story whose actual birthday it is, and you’re crying to me about your feelings about my goddamn fucking birthday? Sorry for all the italics, but it’s still unbelievable that I have to comfort my mother on my own damn birthday because I’m not performing appropriately for her. On my own damn birthday.
It’s all about her. I’m still mad that it’s taken me way too long to figure out that my mother is as narcissistic as my father, but in a very different way. My father is just classic–he can’t see outside of himself and can’t fathom that anyone would think differently than he does. My mom, on the other hand, is a complicated mess of martyr, people-pleaser, and enabler with the ‘can’t see other points of view’ buried WAY deep. In addition, because she’s always catering to my father, she dumps all her anxieties on me. this has been happening since I was eleven, and while it got better** for a decade or so, it’s gone back in the shitter since my father has retired. Yes, those are directly related, but this is also not the post for that.
I expected her to call me yesterday because of the email, but instead, it was just this wall of text (but verbally) about how busy she was because she was going to have the surgery in a week and she didn’t know if she could find the time to call me today on my actual birthday because she was so busy you see because of the surgery which she decided it was better to do now because what if it didn’t get better and the pain got worse and when she took her medication, it was better but what if she stopped taking her med–Mom, did you check your email? Yes, I had to literally interrupt her mid-sentence because she wasn’t going to stop any time soon. I wrote the paragraph how she talks to give it the full flavor.
Here’s the thing. Every time she calls, there’s a band around my chest that starts squeezing. With every word she babbles, it gets tighter and tighter. I have anxiety myself, and she just exacerbates it ten-fold by being the voice inside my head, but outside my body. I have a hard time breathing when she’s in the middle of one of her word vomits. And, yes, I’ve talked to her about it. I’ve told her I can’t be the receptacle of all her emotions. She’s admitted she probably needs a therapist, but she won’t get one. I know I’m not helping by allowing her to continue doing it, but it’s really difficult to cut her off every time. I am getting better at cutting it short, but it’s still not enough.
Think about it. All she had to do was wish me a happy birthday. I don’t care about it, but I would have accepted it and we’d have been done with it. But, no, she had to give a monologue about how hard her life is and how panicked she felt at the thought of not being able to call me today. As if I’m waiting breathlessly all day for her to call and wish me a happy birthday. She knows how I feel about my birthday. She knows I don’t care about it (except in a negative way. I still don’t think I should have been born). And yet, she thought it was appropriate to dump all her anxiety surrounding it onto me. She didn’t call me to wish me a happy birthday for my sake but for her own. She would have felt she was a bad mom if she hadn’t called me, and it didn’t matter what I thought about it.
Side Note: The video I included is interesting. When it came out, there were all these articles about how it was Eminem trying to reconcile by apologizing to her. I had a very different read of it–it was him walking away. He states that he loves her and apologizes for his lashing out, but at the end of the day, he can’t be around her. Again, I acknowledge that I’m looking at it through a very biased lens, but he’s saying, “I understand you had it really hard. I understand you did the best you could. I love you. From a very safe distance.” Yes, that’s my interpretation, but it’s also in the words and the video.
I’m tired. I’m exhausted. Part of my negativity around my birthday is how much my parents push the relentless cheer and rah rah attitude concerning it. I’m not allowed to have anything other than 100% positive feelings about it, and I just don’t. It reminds me of how my parents treat my emotions in general. I’m not allowed to be negative about anything or to have any individual thoughts of my own. I try to keep them to myself, but sometimes, it’s nearly impossible. The best I can do right now is shine them on as quickly as possible and minimize the damage to my psyche and soul. It’ll have to do for now.
*Age doesn’t matter, but I have an intense fear of death. Not the post for that, however.
**Better is very relative.