Birthday Theory
If birthdays make you feel weird—me, too. It’s the day I want to be loved the hardest, but not everyone knows that or knows how to do that. It’s a day where all the feelings of life and youth and mortality and family come bubbling to the surface, and sometimes it bubbles over. Sometimes the beauty of my memories make me cry. Sometimes I cry with despair over what I thought life would be, all the mistakes I’ve made, my regrets. Sometimes I cry for the world and everyone hurting in it.
My birthday comes at the end of summer like a punctuation mark on the already downward trending vibe—days are shorter, things are deader, a part of me stiffens, bracing for authority and order. There’s a finality in the air, probably instilled way back in school days, an end to freedom and long listlessness, sweaty, horny summer. There’s also a sense of reinvention present—a chance to show up to fall as a new person, decorating my binder just so—sure that this year would be different, I would be different. My birthday marks the moment I could transform, prove to myself I’m happy, loved, and ready for the next iteration of me AND I should do it in a banging outfit, fuckable and perfect, eternally 22, eternally ready to party.
But my birthday has always been threaded with chaos—childhood meltdowns simmering at too much attention, too much pressure for things to go right. As a teenager, the tragedy of expectations vs reality. Shit luck placing dark life events on the eve of my day, souring the celebrations. Please enjoy these haikus detailing a string of my worst birthdays.
16
Tragic Sweet Sixteen
I had to break the window
Stitch me together
17
On a bench with mom
Felony on my record
Birthday card message
18
Two Klonopin please
I’m rolling in Mexico
With the wrong boyfriend
19
At the Ritz Carlton
On my 42nd cigarette
Bleeding out baby
Once my birthdays were under my control, I went about seeking to make them happy, easy, and for the most part succeeded. Cartwheels in Savannah, a warehouse full of friends in Bushwick, surprise homemade cakes, old friends driving hours to show up for me, bodega roses, key lime pie, late late late night conversations on stoops. The beautiful birthdays are plentfiul, but it’s still a day I approach with a tinge of anxiety, and feel a burden has been lifted the day after.
Birthdays are the final frontier of a polished veneer on social media, the ultimate measuring stick of being successful at fun. There’s a performance to it, and social rules: others should post about you and you should repost it, you shouldn’t have to be the one to announce it—people should just know. Same goes for IRL: to ask for recognition on your birthday is a bit unrefined, you’re supposed to be grown, not want to make a big deal, be too cool for birthdays, pleasantly surprised when someone else takes care of celebrating you.
On your birthday, you walk around with a secret, and whether or not you blurt it out depends in part on how much you are willing to be vulnerable. A kind, soft day lets you unroll into it, you wear a smile like a birthday crown and people congratulate you accordingly. But sometimes the desire for perfection creates a steel facade, your stiffness manifests in distance, love runs from you. The problem is, you don’t get to choose the perfect days, they just happen, usually when you don’t plan it. You can collect them as you go, try to dissect the design, but ultimately the secret ingredient of perfection is indecipherable.
And so a reframe is necessary. You can still hope for the perfect day, as long as you’re fully aware that may not happen. Your role is to reflect on your year, the beauty, the life you live. And collect the little loves—the little loves are the best. The texts from afar, messages from people you haven’t spoken to in years, Facebook posts from your friend’s mother. They’re little pings to your heart, unexpected and thus transformative. Most of life is the little things. The only way to make something immortal is to savor it. Focus on the good, zero in on the smallest pleasures. Take a superpowered fucking microscope at your life and blow up the beauty in your memories and moment.
And so, on that note…
My Unsolicitated Advice: Ask for what you want, people aren’t mind readers and expecting them to know what to do is a double suicide. This goes for birthdays, this goes for sex, this goes for how you want to be loved. Protect your heart, but not so hard that you don’t leave space for people to get in there and shift your perspective. You can share love and beautiful intimacy with someone you just met and will never see again, someone you could never have a relationship with, someone you kinda hate outside of bed—let yourself. Soak up every bit of connection and don’t think too far into the future. Do it for the story, do it because it feels good, do it and make a video. Take long walks outside in all weather. Sometimes a solo beach walk is better than “romantic long walks on the beach.” Create a ritual that is just for you: go to museums alone, have extravagant desserts that you don’t have to share, order a single oyster. Do it yearly on your birthday! Fuck people that hold different views than you—it is the only way to change the world. Withhold* from people who don’t make the necessary overtures, even though you want them more. *Try to withhold but when you fail don’t feel bad, just let the pain mix with the pleasure and write about it* Be a generous and enthusiastic lover. Make people say your name. Hold their name in your mouth, taste it. Whisper it to them. Laugh during sex, it’s awkward and funny! If you ever cry during or after sex, make them lick your salty tears.
Highlights of my summer: eating cherries in my grandma’s backyard, spitting the pits at my boyfriend (cheered on by her, 90 yrs old), sipping wine on the front porch in the evening, a friend’s birthday party in which I was bitten no less than 83 times by mosquitos, a truly sweltering New York Bastille Day made better by a free baguette and cheese, my first rattlesnake experience, smoking cigarettes in my dear friend’s garden with her cat, eating on our little deck area when it finally cools enough at dusk, naps on the beach under layers of sun protection, an evening at The Greek Theater close enough to the stage to witness the glory that is Regina Spektor.
What have you learned at your wise old age, however “old” you may be? What are your summer highlights?
If you feel like writing some devastating haikus and stripping down to your birthday suit, consult with the Birthday Theory Writing Workbook.