I’m Going to Make My Birthday a Big Deal

Years ago, well into my teenagerhood, I asked my mom to not post about my birthday on Facebook because I wanted to see who would remember it without being told. That year I got a lot fewer calls on my birthday. And I was happy about it. Another part of the reason I wanted her to not post my birthday was that, at the time, I didn’t want people to celebrate my birthday at all. I didn’t think I had a lot of birthdays left. It was a dark time for me and I didn’t plan to have a lot more birthdays.

I never wanted people to make a big deal out of me or my birthday so I would avoid telling people when it was. I would be an ass and say that my birthday happens once a year or that it was around the beginning of the year. I would say that I was a year older weeks in advance so no one knew exactly when it was or I would never mention it at all. I saw no reason for anyone to make a big deal out of celebrating my birthday because to me, it was just another day for anyone else. Looking back on it, I think the funniest thing was that after I told my mom to stop posting my birthday on Facebook, she stopped making a moderately sized deal of it too.

At the beginning of senior year, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I never envisioned myself being a senior in college. Yes, I had the daydream where I would be holding books in my arms, with a hot coffee in my hand as I walk on a brick path to an old building in the crisp fall (literally no part of that has ever happened), but I never imagined myself as a senior in college. A student facing the fact that I will no longer be a student in a few months and that I would have to start a career in this field I’m studying. Hardly a few days go by now without me being reminded that I have to be making these decisions in a few months.

And all year I have always seen it as just that, that I never saw myself getting to senior year so that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing. And then it hit me tonight, I never saw myself making it this far in life at all. I’m turning 22 and I didn’t think I would make it past 16. I feel lost and confused all the time because I have no idea what to do next and it’s because I never thought this far ahead. I never made the vision board at 16 on where I thought I’d be in 10 years in my dream life with my dream career. I never had a dream school, I never had a dream internship or a dream job that I’d get in college or immediately right after graduation. And in these last few months, I’ve assumed it was because I’m a first-generation college student with other priorities than unpaid labor. But I’m starting to realize it is also in part because I never thought I would be getting to this point.

I’ve been so anxious about everything I’ll be facing soon because I never saw myself facing them one day.

I’ve always been obsessed with space, and anyone that has taken an astronomy class will know the difference between a rotation and a revolution. For anyone that hasn’t taken astronomy or doesn’t remember this petty difference, a rotation is what every heavenly body does every day. Every day, the Earth, the sun, the moon, the other planets, all rotate on their axis and that is how we get the cycle of days. A revolution is what the satellites of the larger objects do. The moon is a satellite of the Earth and the moon revolves around the planet and this is a month-long process, this is how we get the phases of the moon. The Earth is a satellite of the Sun so we revolve around the Sun in a yearlong process, this is how we get the change in seasons and the new year.

Most people would remember from English class that revolution also means change. And whenever my friends’ or sisters’ birthdays come around, I always congratulate them on making it another revolution around the Sun. They just made it another change around the Sun. The Earth is in the same place it was a year ago, but they are never in the same place they were a year ago. So much happens in a year and they made it through all of it, and it should be celebrated. But I’ve never extended this same grace and love to myself. I’ve always treated my birthday as just another day, but that’s not the case. It’s never been just another day. It is a day that should be special, especially because I never thought I would have this many birthdays. And I’m not saying that someone has to want to end it all for them to make their birthday a big deal, I’m just saying to myself I deserve to make my birthday. I should make my birthday a big deal.

And so, I will. I will celebrate my birthday in the most obnoxious fashion (not right now, of course, we live in a pandemonium and I’m responsible). But friends, making it an event, taking trips for it, going to a party one day, or actually doing the shots I was robbed of last year.

My birthday will be a big deal because I’m not in the same place I was last year and I am alive to celebrate that fact. And not just this year but in every year to come. I will always be in a different place and a different person from where and who I was the year prior.

I lived through a revolution, I should applaud myself for that.