Sunday, September 11, 2005

On this, the eve of the twelfth day of September

I sit here and I reflect upon my life and the fact that tomorrow will mark the completion of my 26th year of it. If you had asked me a few years ago what I thought I would be like on my 26th birthday, I'm pretty sure the description I would have given you would be vastly different than the reality of today. First off, I probably would not have predicted that I would be a mother. In fact there are still some days when I wake up and it surprises me, despite the fact that my baby is 16 months old. Although, the role of "mother" has become deeply ingrained in me. Today, I went shopping with some birthday money I got over the weekend. All in all, I would say it was a pretty successful shopping trip. I bought a pair of shoes, a pair of pajamas, a pair of pants and a backpack--all for Eric. Oh, I got myself a cup of Starbucks.

I never would have guessed that my birthday would prove to be such a depressing event for me. Well, I suppose depressing is really the wrong word. It's more that it is no longer a big deal, where it used to be something I really looked forward to. I would start reminding people months ahead of time. I would have an idea of what I wanted to do to celebrate. I would make a list of things that I wanted as gifts. Now I feel like I couldn't care less. I want to do something to celebrate my birthday, but I don't know what. Everything I think of just sounds like more of a chore than it's worth. Due to poor planning, I didn't do anything with my friends this weekend--just my parents. I figured I could celebrate with the friends next weekend, but I just found out that my parents are going out of town and can't babysit. The weekend after that is another friend's birthday.

Oh yeah, that's the other thing. From August 29-October 30, six of my very close friends have birthdays. There are also several less-close friends who have birthdays in there too, and I may or may not get invited to celebrate those as well. I have a very limited window of time in which to celebrate my b-day before it's somebody else's turn. In the past two years, I've taken to convincing myself that all of my friends are pretty overwhelmed with birthdays this time of year, so no one will really care/notice if I don't do anything to celebrate. But they do notice and then complain that I'm not doing anything. If it bothers them so much, why don't they throw me a damn party? Then all of our problems are solved!

OK, now I am getting depressed. Better quit while I'm ahead. Happy birthday to me. Yay.

Hmmm...my birthday would probably be better if I had this get-up:

1 comment:

Mara said...

WELL HAPPY BIRTHDAY!