Hi! I turned 35 a couple of days ago on Wednesday! For some, that’s a big cause for celebration but unfortunately I always get really, really fucking sad on my birthdays for some reason. Not 100% sure why but it’s a consistent enough thing for me that I often also see a pretty big drop in my creativity afterward too. This usually looks like a writing / blogging drought where I don’t generate much content during the summer and feel super uninspired about everything.
I’ve already challenged that quite a bit this year though! This past month I posted the best content that I think I’ve ever written during any of my birthday months before. In particular I was really proud of my post on squishes and how I experience them, and last week’s 5 reasons why I swipe right on Tinder.
So that’s good! On top of that I have some nice things happening this week too. On my actual birthday I went to my mom’s and we rented Black Widow to watch on her huge TV. Tomorrow I get to go have lunch with my partner Verne and their parents, then I get to check out the Fringe Festival here in Saskatoon.
On top of all that, this upcoming Sunday I’m going to a mansion with my partners and a couple of friends to get wine tipsy, swim naked, play some games, and maybe have some sexy fun times! Sadly, not everybody I wanted to see can make it though, which I’m a little bummed about. It’s been a incredibly hard year and I was really looking forward to being surrounded by all my important people for this year’s birthday. Being able to see all of my local-ish partners, play friends, and squishes in one place, getting to be social and affectionate with them all, would have gone a long way in recharging me tbh. But I understand that folks have a lot going on in their lives as well!
Maybe that’s not helping either. Regardless, even with good things happening and stuff to look forward too, I’m just feeling… anxious. Sad too. Anxious and sad, like every other birthday I’ve ever had.
And that kinda sucks.
I mean, if I really think about it I guess it makes sense.
Last year my birthday was particularly challenging as I was struggling with a lot of insecurity and boundary issues in my marriage at the time, as well as an incredibly unhappy home situation and very toxic, unsafe relationship with a metamour. Sadly, this didn’t improve, resulting in nearly a year of me living in an increasingly harmful environment in which my mental and physical health hit all-time lows. Things only changed when this past January irreconcilable communicating failures led to my separation.
Immediately after that I found myself in another harmful situation when I moved in with some friends, one of whom became increasingly angry and verbally abusive over the couple of months that I was there. For weeks I listened to them put me down, call me names, attack my character, slam doors, stomp around the house, give the silent treatment, and overall just do things that made me feel small, unintelligent, and incapable. All this while I was in the midst of coping with my separation, PTSD of the prior home situation, as well as a recent ADD diagnosis.
It hit me real fucking hard.
So, I’m still reeling from all that and trying to unpack it all.
But even without all the stress, birthdays are just… hard. They always have been and I’ve always had depressing around them. I’m not sure if it’s because I just have the wrong expectations for them, or if I’m not approaching them in the right ways.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always had trouble celebrating myself in any way, big or small. Maybe it’s because I’m 35 and I still don’t have any confidence in who I am. Maybe it’s because 5 years ago I wrote that: “I am both completely sure of my queerness, and completely incapable of adequately defining or understanding it in any way that makes sense.”
And, like… yeah… I’m still there, y’all.
I dunno.
But hey, I still went to my mom’s, ate pizza, and watched the shit outta Black Widow a couple of nights ago. It was great! And I’m still gonna have fun at my birthday sex party on Sunday, even if not all of my important peeps can be there.
And maybe it’s actually okay if I’m feeling sad for it all too. Birthdays are hard.
