Here Come Those Birthday Blues Feelings Again
It starts at the beginning of the month. We roll through the February, March, and April birthdays. Then it’s my turn. I do not share my birthday month with anyone in my family. I also do not share that excitement for one’s birthday with anyone else in my family. I never have.
Taurus season slowly marches out and Gemini season rolls in. Unlike the descriptions on my zodiac pages, my chattiness goes to silence. My mind experiences it’s annual arrival of the fog. The fog is a cloud so thick, clear thought becomes challenging. My sharp as a tack, quick-witted mind stops being curious and turns inward. The process of bringing a thought forward from my mind to my mouth is more like trying to retrieve a McDonald’s children’s toy from the remote reaches of a thick swamp. As I near it, it continues to move away. My ability to write feels more like trying to read and write in a dream while deep in sleep. The cloudiness is unmerciful.
There is this sense of two conflicting notions. The idea that I should be so happy that I’ve lived another year that gratitude and joy will overwhelm me runs headlong into the sense of deep loathing and sadness on the day of my birth. I don’t tell people my birthday because when others celebrate me, it hurts worse. I have been trying to cancel my birthday since I was a young teen. I don’t want to go out with friends, I don’t want to party, I don’t want to hear Happy Birthday. I want to stay in my bed and sleep until the day passes. I want to be an amnesiac who can’t remember what day of the year it is. I always think of how wonderful it would be to have no awareness of a birthday or a birth month. Just another month on the calendar like July or September.
This feeling is met with guilt. I feel like I owe something to those who love me. They have been trained to celebrate my birthday as they do all birthdays. They believe that those infernal days are designed for extra shows of affection. It is the day to go do what you want, eat what you want, buy what you want. They get to revel in your pure, unadulterated happiness. They get to witness you initiating another trip around the sun with hedonistic abandon.
And every year I rob them of that gift.
I want to sleep more and more the closer it gets. I want to go find a remote cabin and stay there alone. I want to sit somewhere and ruminate. I want to avoid hugs and kisses. I don’t want sex. I might want drugs to escape the extreme low, but thats not my coping mechanism so I don’t indulge those thoughts. The build up is a stressful combination of dread and hopelessness. I reflect on the apparent nothingness that is my life. I was once a this or a that in high school. I became a stay at home mom. I used to write all the time, but I haven’t published anything. I was such an accomplished artist, but I’ve not really done anything with that. I didn’t go to a traditional college or backpack abroad. I am wracked with a deep sense of failure and disappointment. I am robbed of my ability to rationalize. I think of the way I’ve failed my kids. I think of the ways I’ve failed to develop my sense of self. I think about the transitions in my life that have led to having no friends. In those spaces when I had friends, I thought about how I didn’t deserve their celebration and thoughtfulness. My normally expansive mind became a closed loop of negative thoughts, as it always has for longer than I can remember.
On my 41st year and 360th day of existence, I googled “Why do birthdays suck?” The answer was the Birthday Blues. A not so uncommon occurence for some folks. Folks with no other forms of depression. Folks like me who have struggled with more severe depression in the past, but now mostly experience it around and on my birthday. Every. Single. Year.
The birthday blues can cause you to want to isolate, to feel like your brain is foggy. It can overwhelm you with thoughts of disappointment at how far you’ve come and how little you’ve achieved. It can make you more fatigued. It can cause a sense of listlessness. It is marked by a lack of enthusiasm, increased periods of crying and a general, overall sense of negativity. It is transient, meaning it can set in as far out as the beginning of one’s birthday month and last to just past the day or until the end of the month. One’s condition improves once the birthday has passed.
I am not to blame for how I’ve always felt.
It is okay that I’ve cried at least once a day, everyday since five days away from my birthday. It is okay that the question, “what do you want to do for your birthday” is always met with the answer “I don’t know (nothing).” It’s okay that I’ve always wanted to spend that time alone, in my room, in a cabin, on a mountaintop, etc. It is okay that I forgo cake and singing and that those things make me want to burst into tears of sadness. It is okay that I want to sleep more and can’t answer questions clearly. It is okay that every single day building up to it becomes harder and harder. It is okay to not be cheery or full of joy at the mention of that dreaded day.
This might not remove the guilt that accompanies this newly discovered truth for me, but it may help me to navigate this better in the future. It will allow me to explain to my loved ones that I cannot celebrate in traditional ways. I will be able to schedule a trip to a remote location or a five day meditation retreat that doesn’t offend those who want to do my birthday on the day of my birth. I am fine with “Happy Birthday” being said a day later or even two, but the day of is the hardest day to breathe, let alone celebrate. But knowing that this is a known reality for many people that is accepted by the mental health profession means that I finally can both grieve my day of birth and celebrate it at the same time, in peace.
Just not on the same day.
I hope this helps someone else who struggles.
