Birthdays

Looking for a change of pace on this blog, even if only briefly. Today's topic -- birthdays -- will take care of that.

As much as I'd like to tell you how old I am now -- I'm not one of those types who particularly cares to lie about his age like seemingly so many people in this culture do -- I'm abstaining because of how easy it is to access one's personal information simply by putting month, date, and year together. All the bad guys are getting is month and date, by virtue of inference.

That all said, I had a nice, low-key celebration today. I went to work, received a nice card from my boss and co-workers, received a nice birthday email from my boss which I subsequently printed out, received many other such nice messages from friends, family, acquaintances (via Facebook), and of course my wonderful girlfriend who has sent me now no less than ten birthday related messages or images. :-)

That's not why I'm posting. I'm posting to share an observation about myself in regard to birthdays. For many years throughout childhood and well into adulthood, "the day of" my birthday always felt like a big deal to me, even if I never let on. If I didn't get messages or acknowledgements or even a celebration, I felt real cruddy by the end of the day, and those cruddy feelings lasted at least a couple weeks. (Sadly, these cruddy feelings kinda happened a lot in my late teens and early twenties.)

One cool thing about the therapy group I was in is that it gave the opportunity for members to celebrate their birthdays, and even to celebrate in such a way that they could feel like a child again (in the good sense). I was able to take advantage of that a couple times. Even outside of the group, several different years I arranged celebrations with groups of friends, usually by going to a restaurant or having a friend of mine graciously host it at their house. I'm grateful for all of that.

Another thing about birthday expectation-related feelings is that, when I was a child, being another year older also meant another year bigger, another year taller, another year stronger, and another year better. Granted, when I turned 26, I had that "wait a minute" reaction regarding that, realizing that at 26 I was neither taller nor stronger than I was when I had turned 25. But those deep-down "the day of" hope and expectation feelings lingered. Because, after all, these days only come around once a year.

I don't know if it's because of the kind of personal growth I experienced in the last year -- changing jobs, going back to school, getting out of debt, building up savings -- or other spiritual personal growth, or if it's because for the last year-plus I've been having perhaps the best earthly present I've ever had -- a woman I love in my life who also loves me back. But today as I turn another year, "the day of" no longer has felt pressing. After work, my goal was to get laundry done. I have a fresh batch of clean clothes. Yay! (Half my life ago, I could not for the life of me understand that. Now I do.) My dad treated me to a delicious dinner. No presents. No cards. But that's ok; I got to hang out with him, pick up our food together, and then eat it at home together.

I don't know what it is. But it seems to be what celebrating birthdays is like as an adult. And I don't mind that one bit.