The Birthday challenge

A birthday means that we're one year older.

This time it meant more…

It meant ‘bye-bye teens’ for me. It is scary to type, even scarier to live. I’ve just hit "The Big 2-0." It is not a tragedy in itself but there is something about turning this very specific number that I did not quite like.

I can no longer blame my teenage for my idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. Now there are all MINE and here to stay. We tend to compare where we are with where we thought we'd be at whatever landmark age we've reached [20 is one such horrifying watershed] and so did I. The results are not even remotely remarkable. I haven't met any of my Cinderella-style benchmarks. I don't know what I'm going to do, but with youthful certainty I know that by 25 I'd be tremendously rich and deliriously happy. Fancy that!

People like me should not be allowed to have birthdays. At the start of our special day we should be taken into a quiet room and sedated. When we wake up the next day, then we might celebrate the end of our birthday - the over-ness of it. I have too many expectations from it. Take this year; my own particular brand of birthday paranoia has been sleeping nicely for months but that sleep ends as the first phone call buzzes in my ear. I get a coupla early morning calls, but with each one I attend I think of another three people who should have also called. Why didn’t X call me, and when exactly did she stop? I can't stop thinking of all the people who did not call me, so I try to distract myself by yelping in an extra high pitched ‘thank-you-for-calling-so-sweet-of-you’s’ . I notice that most of the callers had very little to say; just a "happy birthday"or a "many happy returns" that had replaced the “many many many happy returns” of last year. My paranoia wants to know why there is no larger message, something witty or kind, and something really for me? Evidently these people don't actually care; they are just ticking the boxes of long-term friendship: calls for significant events, tragedies, or some other formula.

Without warning I am swamped by all my bad birthday memories: 'me' crying at one of my parties, me fighting with friends at another, me overwrought and crying on my first teenage birthday outing, me jealous of my friends getting more attention than me on MY special day, me demanding a friend to swap a goodie bag for the birthday present she had given me earlier, me sobbing over duplicate presents, over unwanted presents, and lately, over my ageing self. That is a hard thing about getting older, the baggage mounts and the fallout sometimes threatens to smother you. Birthdays are like challenges..I’m more like “Oooookay..okay God bring it on..bring it on!”

The knotty thing about this birthday is that it was ‘also’ exceptionally enjoyable making expectations for the next birthday zoom off to newer, earlier un-jaunted levels..
particularly..the flattering fan mails…. “Mishti fan club member roll no:6758" wishes you.. ha ha ha..!”

The next birthday paranoia has set in earlier than usual..this time with larger magnitude and greater expectations..Holy cow!