Why Birthday Blues Are Tricky, and How I Overcame Them
Our relationships are not defined by how they celebrate our birthday
Every year, I experience a birthday dread. It’s nothing to do with ageing, more a fusion of expectations and anticipated letdowns. And the more people I speak with about birthdays, the more I recognise I’m not the only one who feels peculiar about this day.
I believe birthdays inject steroids into the human need to be seen and known, recognised and loved, valued and acknowledged.
There’s a residual niggle that of all the days that haven’t gone to plan this year; this is my day, the day. Surely, this is a day I will be cherished, and friends and family will message me and give me the warm fuzzy feeling that I am loved and I matter.
And then my birthday comes, and the world spins on because, to everyone else, it’s just a day. Perhaps it’s my annual day of reckoning.
I’m ashamed and embarrassed to admit that I used to judge my relationships by how people showed up for me on my birthday. As if those who remembered and sent me a message were my real friends and those who forgot didn’t really like or value me.
Sure, I get it. Birthdays are just a day, and life is busy. If not for social media reminding us, we may not remember anyone’s birthday.
I’m not even a look-at-me type of person. I don’t need fancy frills and bells and whistles. Heck, I got married in a second-hand generic dress with four guests present. I don’t desire extravagance. And yet, a few little words in a message on my birthday hold enormous power over my well-being. So when messages don’t come through and loved ones who I thought would remember don’t, my mood plummets and my thoughts fill with self-deprecating negativity.
Maybe it’s because I’m a twin and am estranged from my twin sister. Maybe my birthday is a reminder that out there in the world is someone with whom I shared a womb, someone with whom I share so much, and yet we remain strangers.
Perhaps my brain is full of social media highlight reels of other people’s birthdays. Oh comparison — that pesky little joy stealer.
But whatever it is, I find myself getting tetchy in the few days before my birthday. It’s almost like I’m anticipating an annual reminder of my irrelevance and that nobody loves me.
I know it sounds petulant and childish. But also, I know there are others like me.
In the podcast episode 275 of We Can Do Hard Things, hosted by Glennan Doyle, her wife Abby, and sister Amanda, they discuss all the sticky and tricky aspects of birthdays. Their one-hour conversation made me realise I’m not alone in my weirdness about my birthday and that many people experience complicated feelings around this day.
In their chat, the ladies attribute the birthday blues to a mix of dashed hopes, a dash of existential crisis and a sprinkling of self-reflection, which leaves us pondering whether our existence even matters.
Something that struck a particular chord with me is the way they describe our attitude to birthdays as being like a performance evaluation of our popularity and loveability over the past year. Ooft, that hit hard. Maybe that’s it, maybe the lack of celebration around me on my birthday makes me feel not only unloved but unloveable.
I try to live by Brad Montague’s beautiful quote, “Be somebody who makes everybody feel like a somebody,” I am a giver and a validator. I want my loved ones to feel seen and known. It’s important to me that everyone I share energy with feels like a somebody.
And yet, so often on my birthday, I feel like a nobody.
It’s one day, how hard is it to remember one day, I used to think to myself. And yet, I do it myself. I often forget the birthday of someone I love and then feel awful that my forgetting may make them feel like a nobody. We all do our best, sometimes we remember, and sometimes we forget.
I wonder if it all comes down to expectations.
Elizabeth Day’s book Friendaholic, discusses how we expect friendships to magically thrive. We all know romantic relationships require open and honest communication to be healthy and happy. Yet many of us are in unbalanced friendships where we give more than we get and then feel miserable because we cannot express our needs.
The truth is, if a friend remembering my birthday and sending me a message, is one of the most important ways they can show up for me, then it’s on me to communicate this to them. I can’t just expect them to know this telepathically.
This year, I think I finally packed up my birthday aggravations and sent them far, far away, into a distant galaxy.
The day before my big day, my husband asked me to drive him to the shop so he could buy me a card (we were on holiday, and he wasn’t insured on the car). He was sheepish and apologetic that he wasn’t more organised. He didn’t want me to feel like an afterthought, as he knows me well enough to understand first-hand my problematic dynamic with this day.
My husband is an incredible man, and our relationship is the most important thing in my life. While driving him to the shop, it dawned on me that our love does not depend on birthday gestures. Birthday card or no birthday card, my husband treats me like every day is my birthday.
This got me thinking. The strength of all my relationships is based on our shared connection and love, not on whether we remember each other’s birthdays.
Some years I receive birthday messages from old friends who I haven’t heard from since my last birthday. While it is nice to receive their good wishes, they are certainly not better friends than those who miss my birthday but are woven into my everyday life. You know, the ones who send me messages to celebrate or commiserate my latest highs or lows or fill up my inbox with cute dog videos just because they know I will love them.
Maybe my prickly relationship with my birthday was my inner child’s yearning for authentic love and relevance. It’s taken four decades to feel like I am enough as I am. And maybe this feeling of being enough has finally allowed me to release the stored ickiness that I associate with birthdays.
Funnily enough, these days, most of my closest friends don’t even know when my birthday is, and I am now at peace with this because the strength of my relationships doesn’t need to be tested and assessed by how people show up for me on this one day.
This year, my best friend from university sent me a birthday message a day late. Old me would have been upset at this and felt like I didn’t matter to her because, over the years, we celebrated each other’s birthdays with fanfare. We even had a joint 21st birthday on a boat, all decked out as a nightclub. New me recognises that life is busy, and her intentions are always full of love. She didn’t realise she was a day late. Just receiving a message from her was heartwarming. I replied with grace and gratitude and said nothing of her being late.
What if we used our birthday as a day of appreciation for our health and the privilege of being alive, not as some unspoken and cryptic test of our loveability?
I have built a new birthday habit as a gift to myself: I write a letter to my future self, which I can not read until the next year. So, each year, I read a letter and write a letter. It’s a wonderful way of listening to my own heart and tuning into myself.
Birthdays can involve complex feelings. Remember to be gentle with yourself and generous and gracious with your loved ones.
Did this piece resonate with you? How do you feel about your birthday? Please do share your thoughts in the comments.
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You can also find my writings and musings on Medium, where I write about well-being, feminism & personal growth. I also own the publication Life Without Children.
