...speaking of countdowns...

I wrote, yesterday, of the countdown to the end of the school year.  I'm excited for it, as is he.  We've got the oversized calendar squares all set and ready for big red Xs.  We've got the first few items all filled in on the Summer-Adventure wishlist.  The days are just, tantalizingly, out of reach...and we're overflowing already with all the "what ifs" and "can't waits" and possibilities.

Right after I clicked the orange publish button yesterday, though, I realized that I'd completely blanked on the other countdown happening in our household.  The one I'm not as excited about.

The countdown to the end of the week, and my birthday.

8th of June.

Coming right up.

No matter how I try to hide from it.

It's a significant day.
To others.  Those who love me.  Those who want to pay-forward what I do in their lives.

It's significant...to them.

It's a dividing line.

A symbolic ending of an era.

The start of something new.

Or, as I prefer to think of it, the turning of the page.

But the chapter isn't over yet.  How could it be?  So much left unresolved.  So many messes to clean up and bows to tie...things yet to do or finish...words as of yet, unspoken.  The chapter isn't over yet, so why should this one day...this one word on the line...be anything of import?

I'm not a birthday girl.

I wonder if I ever was?
I look back on the pages past and search for the character arc that will answer all my questions.

There's bits and pieces of childhood...remnants in 4*6 photographic form that show smiling faces and curly ribbons and sweet treats...that feel like they don't belong to me.  There's awkward, foal-like limbs of teenage years and smiles that don't reach the eyes.  There's the gorgeous, delicious, elaborate cakes that were baked...preserved forever in glossy pictures...testament to the baker's skill.  There's a cherished gift, or a longed-for wish come true wrapped up and displayed.  There's shrimp cocktails
(a rare treat then!) and fruit salads (my preferred dessert!) in the foreground.  There's even cards...stained and brittle now...with saccharine sentiment and empty promises.

The pieces are there.

But they don't really add up to a full picture.

They don't fit together in the frame of my life.

It's as though they belong in a book...a pretty, glossy version of things that didn't really happen the way the storyteller would like to pretend.  A fairytale version of things where the good is...gooder...and the bad is just there as contrast or to move the plot along.

~8~

I have tried, this year just as every other, to prepare for the birthday since the calendar flipped to June.  I have made half-hearted attempts to plan something.  I've clicked through websites, hoping to land on some token to gift myself.  

But I can't seem to do for myself what I'd do for my son...
for a friend...
for a stranger.
I can't seem to get into a celebratory mood.

There's too much history getting in the way of celebration.

Too much of the -not what I had planned, not what I wanted, not what I tried to do- taking up space that I suppose, for others, is filled up with "How great is this?".  There's no room for excitement when all around me is "just get through this next thing..." and "make do".

There's being an adoptee.  It's unavoidable on a day marking my very birth.  There's the backstory of meeting my biological mother and trying so hard to find my origins in her.  The knowledge, ever-present, that I wasn't wanted or worthy.
The day in stark, bold relief...8th of June...a reminder of how disposable I was.

And more than that.
The meeting of her?  The "this is what I came from"?  The "this is the parts of my sum"?  The disappointment and dismay...and all these years later, the disgust.

There, as well, is a marriage on paper that's gone the way of Pompeii...burned to a crisp and buried under ash...preserved in the moment of it's final catastrophe for all to see and remark upon.

The damage it caused leaching out into the soil.

Putting me in my place.

History.  All around.

Too much of plans...

grand ones and small ones...

far flung distant-land ones and five-year savings' ones.

The house...and the home that we'd build inside its walls.

The work and the fulfillment of chasing the dream.

The family...growing up and out.

A bucket-list of missed chances.

There's simply too much history, and not enough of the kind I wanted.

And here it comes.

As ever.

8th of June.

With all it's bluster and bravado.

8th of June.

And I've a cake to make or a son to disappoint.

Have some of column A, try all of column B!

A reminder of all the things that didn't happen.
A reminder of all that has passed me by.

A reminder of all the experiences I won't have.

A reminder of all the dreams I've already had to say goodbye to.

Where is the celebration in that?
What is the celebratory part?
The...survival?
The...still breathing?
The...inevitable ageing?
Where?
Or...
Why?

Whether through the raising-up or the hard-knock refining, I wasn't built to celebrate myself.  I don't have the knack for it.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I feel...shameful...for wanting it to be otherwise.
It's too deeply ingrained in me that I'm not worth it.
Unlike my son, I grew up with a parent who discouraged my confidence...criticized my differences...made mockery of the very things and ideas and opinions that made me unique.
Unlike my son, I grew up in an environment of disapproval.
And I've had a hard time straying...willfully and intentionally...off that course.

I'm good at celebrating others.  I'm good at the gifting...the baking...the prettying-up.  I'm good at the planning and creating and gathering.
And I enjoy it.
I sparkle a bit in the glow that lights up a friend's face when the gift is opened.
I straighten up a bit...an extra inch or so...in knowing I chose well.
I go all-out, as best I can, for my son's birthdays.
(Though one could argue that I seem to do that for most of his days!)

I'm good at celebrating others.
And woefully, miserably inept at doing so for myself.

Even the question "What are you doing for your birthday?" sets off a flurry of panic in me.  It's heavy, to me,  with the weight of others' expectations and needs.
"What are you doing for your birthday?"
They want a plan.  A time and a place. A dress code or a budget.
They want to know what I want.

But...
How can I possibly put into words that what I want is out of reach...
and that pretty packages wrapped up in bows just remind me that I'm not meant for it...
and that those doors will never open for me?
How can I say "I want this" when my wants are so vast and my needs are neglected?
How can I say "come celebrate with me" when the very day is nothing but a reminder of my failings?

I'd like to think that there's an answer here...somewhere on this page.  A hidden cipher in the mish-mash and nonsense ramblings I've vented off.
Perhaps even an end of sorts...wrapped up, of course, and festooned with a bow.

I'd like to imagine that by week's end I will have, somehow miraculously and permanently and decidedly (as if making the decision so to be has ever once worked out for me! Ha!), transformed into the birthday girl.  That I will find myself suddenly of worth and substance as more than simply what I am for others and what I do for others.
That all that was raised-up and refined into will have sloughed off...
That I will be free.

But that imagining...that wishing...feels far more like self-indulgent pity than any real-life, actionable plan to get from Point A (birthday dread) to Point B (bring it on!).
It feels like yelling into the hollow of a storm...knowing full well that the words won't ever make it back out again.

Far safer, then, to just ignore it...

~Leanna