Happy Birthday Me

So it's almost over. I spend the whole year denying this ever happens. If anyone asks me about it, I'm denying it all. I did no such thing. I had no such thing. Today didn't happen. It was just another day.

When I was growing up, birthdays just really weren't important. They were to me. I wanted it to be an important thing. "Look I've made it in this crazy household for another year!! We should really celebrate because I survived for a whole 'nother long year." Or something like that. Dad tried so I give him credit. But I always got the idea that it was just a pain in my mother's arse. The fact that I dared to have a birthday once a year seemed to either piss her off, or she just didn't care. She was notorious for getting mad over something stupid and cancelling holidays, birthdays, refusing to go to weddings/recitals/school programs. So it stands to reason at some point a kid would give up hope. That finally happened (yes I was slow) the year of my 15th birthday. Somehow Mom managed to drag herself out of the office long enough to go to dinner for my birthday. I remember asking if I could go to the mall with my friend for a couple hours. She said no, I was grounded. After dinner she took my friend home first, then dropped me off at home, and then she went back to the office. My Dad was a cop and he got stuck working on some case or another. I understood why he wasn't there and I accepted that because I knew he would have rather been with me. Dinner with my Mom was a waste of time for all involved though. I knew she would rather have been at work. She knew that she should at least make an effort to look like she cared enough to celebrate her youngest daughter turning one year older.

Five days after my 15th birthday, I was in my 6th period English class. I got a call from the front office that my Mom was waiting outside for me. I walked out and the first thing I noticed was that Mom was sitting in the passenger seat of her car and Linda (one of the employees') was driving. I got in the car and Mom was crying. Crying to hard to even tell me what she was crying about. Linda told me my Grandma had died that morning. March 16, 1995. That was the one year that my Grandma did not call me or send me a card for my birthday.

On February 20 of that following year... a very good friend of mine called me. It was his 21st birthday. We talked for a few minutes and I told him Happy Birthday. He said he loved me and hung up. I found out the next morning that he shortly after we got off the phone, he walked out in his front yard and killed himself with his father's shotgun. He had called at least 2 other people that I know of to tell them that he loved them. But what he didn't tell any of us, was that he was hurting. He had the strength to reach out to let us know he loved us... but he couldn't tell us he was tired.

So sometime between March 11, 1995 and March 11, 1996, I quit having birthdays. I quit bothering. I quit telling people. I quit celebrating. My Dad and my husband always remember. They always try to make it a good day for me. But I always remember a long string of just purely rotten birthdays.