There’s something about birthdays
There’s something…incredibly complicated about birthdays.
About the marking of the passage of time and a celebration of a moment that in the grand scheme means nothing to us as an individual.
It’s the day you came into the world, and that means everything to those who love you…but to you…
It feels almost overly gratuitous to celebrate?
When everyone’s focus and attention is turned to you, with the flicker of a candle illuminating your face and the drone of the birthday song in your ear.
When everyone you love is looking at you with a bright smile.
A discomfort trickles in.
The candle feels like a spotlight and you’re left to wonder how you look to others.
Because with a new year you have to change the way you look at yourself.
And when you’re young this change feels like you’re moving to something big, something exciting and unknown.
When you’re 16 and they slide a plastic license across a worn counter with your birth date stamped in the corner, you still have 100 miles to go on the highway.
But at some point, those mile markers drop from three digits to two to one.
Suddenly the car is moving too fast.
Suddenly it feels like you missed an exit, or that the car you’re in doesn’t feel like your car at all anymore.
It feels like someone else’s foot is on the gas and you’re watching the trees and the fields and the bright yellow of the McDonald’s arch pass you by.
And every once in a while, the car slows, and you roll down your windows and you breathe in the air of a new place 1000 miles from where you started.
Sometimes you let in a passenger.
And they stay and they kick their legs up on the dashboard and they change the music in your car to something softer and slower and gentler.
But then they hop out at a rest stop and the music switches back to a country song about Earl.
The car breaks down and you have to get a new one.
You lose the bright red sedan that carried you for so long and trade it in for a car that feels less familiar, that feels like a different skin.
And another candle illuminates your face.
You look around past the trees and the green lights of a BP gas station and you realize you’ve found a new home, in a new car, and there’s a new face staring back at you in the rear view mirror.
You’ve traveled so far and still have so much left to go.
And sometimes you’re tired and sometimes you scream along to a new song that makes your skin tingle and your heart soar.
And no matter how much you want there to be, there are no U-turns on this road, there’s only forward and there’s only you.
Maybe someday, there’ll be someone to switch off the driving, someone who won’t get off at the next exit.
But for now, you’re at home in your car.
And every time you blow a candle, that discomfort eases and ticks back up.
Because no matter what, there’s something about birthdays.
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