Birthday's are weird.

Every year at the same time, on the same day, it's the same thing.

You’re a different age from the year before and you probably celebrate different every year, but the it's all for the same reason. It’s the one day people pretend to care.

It's weird people act like they even care at all. Any other normal day, people pay you no mind.

No communication, no interactions — other than bullshit small talk— nothing.

All of a sudden it’s your birthday and people are suffocating you as if you’ve just waken up out of a 5 year medically induced coma. But you’ve been there the whole time. Everyone just chose not to acknowledge you.

I’m not too sure what it is about birthdays that make you so important all of a sudden. I don’t know if it’s an excuse for people to get out and post about it on social media to enhance their “image” or if it’s just the simple fact that people feel obligated to show up and drown you in gifts and attention.

I do know they don’t _love_ you when there’s nothing to post about.

Some people love their birthdays, most that do either tend to be self centered or love it simply as because they were to accomplish another year in this hell that were meant to “cherish”. Which is understandable.

Others hate their birthdays. Others being people like me. Feeling so alone and distant from the world, soaking in nothing but your thoughts and pondering about how to keep your mind at ease for the other 364 days out of the year.

All of that for one day, one single day of the year, where you feel loved and appreciated because people feel mandated to do so.

You can react to hating your birthday in one of two ways, enjoy it and feed into the false appreciation, which most do. Or you can shut it out and let the day pass as any other.

Sometimes you get screwed and have to have both.

Sometimes others _insist_ on throwing a big but “obligated” performance for you to make you feel appreciated. When in reality, it’s highly insincere. You can try to deny and shut down the offer and let the day pass as normal as much as you want, but the people around you will celebrate anyway and force you to accept it. Whether that’s simple ignorance by not taking no for an answer or going out their way and throwing a surprise party you don’t want.

No matter how you want your birthday to go, it’s never really up to you. If someone does something for you and you reject it or don’t react how they expect you to, you’re considered ungrateful.

It’s like yesterday you were invisible, and today you’re unavoidable.

Don’t forget, your feelings are invalid if your portraying yourself as anything but contented. If you’re doing the bare minimum and pretending to enjoy it and you do as simple as drop your smile, even for a second, the people around you blame you.

You’re only allowed to feel happiness that day followed by the reasoning that _“it’s your birthday”_.

It doesn’t matter if you didn’t want a celebration or a big scene, or if you’re dealing with other things. If your unhappy, you’re ungrateful.

You _have_ to accept the love and attention you want the other 364 days out the year. The ears that listen to you and converse with you for hours, are the same ears that ignore you any other day where you want as simple as to be heard. You _have_ to accept the gifts that you have absolutely no use for, but the only “gift” you wanted was help when you built the courage to speak up and ask for it. You _have_ to accept the change of scenery for your party when the only thing you wanted to see was a moment of internal peace.

They try to blind you from the darkness you’ve sat in the rest of the year. But the silence never left, even when the music was playing.

It’s like when you deep clean your room every few months, and you find something you’ve forgotten about and you over use it or over bare it with love for a while. Then you forget about it again, and do the same thing in a few months when you find it again.

And then it happens again.

And again.

And again…

An endless cycle of “in the moment” love. It’s inconsistent.

Let the candles burn on their own because I never asked to be celebrated, I asked to be treated how I’m treated on my birthday consistently, to be seen, to be heard, to be wanted, to be loved.

But that’s a gift that I never get to unwrap.