Birthdays suck
My birthday, Christmas and New Years are annual days of depression for me. I can’t stop thinking about how fleeting time is and another year of my limited time on this Earth has passed. During high school after opening presents on X-mas (assuming we decided to do the Christmas morning tradition) my mom and I would just split and do our own thing like usual, like a normal day. Same with New Years, its the first day of another year, I feel obligated to do something special but it’s just another day. The lack of celebration makes me guilty because I can’t stop thinking about how life is short so that I SHOULD be doing something special. To say the least my mom and I have always had a pretty strained relationship, so any mildly pleasant family time is asking for too much.
Birthdays are no better if not worse. It’s literally a day commemorating your life getting shorter by a year. And I haven’t had a birthday party since 2nd grade, my cousins and sister are far away, and back in high school my friend group liked doing their own thing. Ever other year or so if I’m lucky, I’ll get a cake. Last year I decided not to go to a university but to stay in Fremont (moved out of my mom’s tho) to get my nursing license early and eventually transfer to an even better college; this effectively reduced the amount of friends I see in a week to zero. If not doing anything on my birthday wasn’t bad enough, now I don’t have a choice in the matter. I’m forced to sit in my room and think about how my life is getting shorter, how I should be doing something but can’t, and how bitterly lonely I am.
I’m actually considering taking melatonin to help me sleep 24 hours so I can wake up on April 21st and get on with my life.
“But Jordan, these are special days that should be celebrated!”
That’s a good point Mr-figment-of-my-own-imagination, maybe doing something on these holidays would make them seem special. When I’m a dad I’m going to start random family traditions that I’ll continue even when my kids are adults and have their own kids; when my adult children look back on holidays when they were kids they will only have happy memories. I’ll be a fucking great dad and make sure my kids look forward to holidays.
